ORANGE was described as Regional Express Airlines' home territory on Friday and for that, the city can thank Aviation pioneer Max Hazleton.
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Rex Deputy Chair John Sharp AM made a flying visit to congratulate Mr Hazelton on his milestone 95th birthday on Friday and in doing so, spoke of the strong link the regional carrier has with Orange, thanks to Mr Hazelton's pioneering days and his later establishment of Hazelton Airlines.
The past two years have rocked the airline industry and Rex recently announced a decision to review its service to Bathurst, sending ripples through the Orange community however Mr Sharp said Rex had a strong link with Orange.
"This is our home territory," he said.
"Nearly 70 years of history, we're not about to abandon our history, that's an important thing to keep in mind.
"It's obviously more difficult with Qantas having moved in, in retribution to us having moved into the domestic airline market, and that's made it more difficult and routes less viable for both of us. They're losing money to do it but they're doing it in a number of ports around the country in order to punish us.
"But this is our home turf."
Rex airlines was formed in 2002 after acquiring two regional airlines, Hazelton and Kendell Airlines, from the Ansett Group, which collapsed that year.
Mr Sharp described Mr Hazelton as a living legend of the aviation industry.
"Max Hazelton is the last of the great aviation pioneers in Australia. He pioneered so many elements of what we now take for granted in our agricultural aviation and in regional aviation," he said.
"To have him still with us today as the last of those pioneers of aviation, people who cut their own path through, not people who followed an existing path, to celebrate his 95th birthday is a really great occasion."
Mr Sharp said thanks to Mr Hazelton, 1500 people are employed nationally with 40 at the airlines Orange's call centre.
"Rex was founded a long, long time ago by Max and Laurel Hazelton, 1954, and Max did things that nobody else had done," Mr Sharp said.
"In the course of doing it he changed the way rural aviation operated - crop dusting, crop spraying - and he changed the way regional airlines operated.
"He did it by breaking the rules in many cases."
But Mr Sharp said, they were rules that needed to be broken.
"Max is a determined person, a tenacious person. If I was a bureaucrat I wouldn't use 'tenacious'. I would use the word 'larrikin' who broke the rules for the right reasons."
Mr Hazelton, who was also presented with the bicycle he rode around the airport in his younger days, said it was nice to be recognised.
"Rex has done a great job since they took it over, they saved the day," Mr Hazelton said.
Mr Sharpe described the last two years as the hardest he'd experienced in his 40 years in the industry.
"Without the support that all the airlines, Qantas, Virgin, Rex have received from the Commonwealth government there would not be an airline industry in Australia today," he said.
"Things are back and things are looking positive.
"We're now doing three return services a day between Sydney and Orange a day and the loads are fairly good there, so that may increase shortly."
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