OzJet and Outback Air
9th in a Series: Two Fictional Australian Airlines
OzJet Airlines and Outback Air are two subsidiary Australian airlines owned by AirOz Pty Limited, an aviation holding company headquartered on the grounds of Alice Springs Airport (ASP) in Connellan, Northern Territory, Australia, where both airlines are based.
Outback Air is an Australian regional airline subsidiary that are established in 1947, when it was originally known as Alice Air Charters Pty Limited. Outback Air provides scheduled, charter and ad hoc flight services to more than 100 airports and landing strips throughout Australia. Outback Air uses a selection of turboprop and piston-prop aircraft to carry a mix of passengers and freight.
OzJet is a low-cost Australian national airline subsidiary that was established in 2018. It provides scheduled and charter air service to 18 cities and select resort locales within Australia, along with an international air service to Denpasar-DPS in Bali, Indonesia. It uses Airbus A220 aircraft exclusively..
In addition to Alice Springs-ASP, the company also maintains focus city level operations for both airlines in the following cities:
Darwin-DRW, Northern Territory
Broken Hill-BHQ, New South Wales
Kalgoorlie-KGL, Western Australia
Mount Isa-ISA, Queensland
History
Alice Air Charters Pty 1947-1977
Alice Air Charters Pty Limited (AAC) was founded in February 1947 by Ted Stansbury, one of Australia’s top RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) fighter aces during World War II who was credited with at least 25 confirmed wartime victories. Mr Stansbury, a noted pugilist before and during the war whose aviator callsign during WWII was Boxer, adopted his wartime mascot - a cartoon baby kangaroo wearing boxing gloves in a fighting stance - as the company’s original tail logo.
With the help of roughly 500 small scale investors, Mr Stansbury was able to establish Alice Air Charters and acquire two war surplus Douglas DC-4s and two Douglas DC-3s. Mr Stansbury hired a coterie of fellow WWII pilots to fly for the company, including one of the first Aboriginal fighter pilots, Billijee “Billy” Gidarra (1924-1995).
Mr Gidarra and Mr Stansbury first met as opponents in 1945 at an RAAF boxing match at Morotai in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia); Mr Gidarra won the match by a split decision. The two men remained friends for life, with Mr Gidarra working steadily for the airline as its chief pilot until he retired in 1992 as a company Vice President.
After erecting hangars at Alice Springs-ASP and Darwin-DRW, in May 1947 Alice Air Charters began to actively fly passengers and freight in and around the Northern Territory, as well as to portions of neighboring Western Australia, South Australia, and Queensland. The Douglas DC-4s ran scheduled flights along the north-to-south corridor encompassing Alice Springs-ASP, Darwin-DRW and Adelaide-ADL, while the company’s Douglas DC-3s were used to perform “milk run” flights branching out to numerous smaller communities through central Australia.
In 1949 the company obtained additional financing to purchase a pair of de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drovers to better serve more remote airstrips around the Australian Outback. The DHA-3s, along with some additional war surplus DC-3 freighters, were received and entered revenue service in 1950.
In 1956 AAC brought on a set of de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otters to serve as bush planes, carrying up to 8 passengers or 2,000 pounds of freight to the shortest and most rugged airstrips across the country.
In 1967, Alice Air Charters became one of the first Australian carriers to take delivery of the then-new de Havilland DHC-6-300 Twin Otter. The company configured these Twin Otters to work as quick change combi aircraft, which could be converted into an all-passenger, all-freighter or mixed configuration as needed with two hours notice. These Twin Otters served as the backbone of the company’s fleet for decades. With their arrival, the company decided to sell off its DHA-3 Drovers and DHC-3 Otters.
Air NT 1977-1998
By 1977, Mr Stansbury had managed to buy out the interests of the company’s remaining investors to take complete control of the business. Where previously the company’s administrative functions were spread out between Alice Springs-ASP and Darwin-DRW, to simply matters and reduce costs Mr Stansbury consolidated the carrier’s head office to Alice-Springs-ASP alone.
Seeing as the company still had a strong presence in Darwin-DRW, he renamed the airline as Air NT, to better reflect the fact that the carrier was a Northern Territory enterprise. Mr Stansbury also designed a new green and gold livery scheme, this time depicting a grown kangaroo standing in front of a symbolic sun, to replace the WWII vintage baby kangaroo Boxer logo. The new scheme was placed on all of the company’s planes, except for one of the two original bare-metal Douglas DC-4s, which retained the original Boxer livery.
That same year, Mr Stansbury bought several Beechcraft Super King Air 250s, configuring some to serve as strictly passenger aircraft while others were converted into combi aircraft. By this time the carrier had acquired several support contracts flying passengers and freight to and from airstrips across much of Outback Australia, supporting mines and other industrial sites as well as several outback sheep and cattle stations and aboriginal communities.
In 1985, the company experienced a boom in business supporting the expansion of the nearby Pine Gap military base. Mr Stansbury needed to find more pilots to fly his aircraft. One of his new hires was a young, semi-itinerant crop duster pilot from Texas named David Conagher, whom Mr Stansbury nicknamed Yank. He helped Mr Conagher get a proper Australian pilot’s license, and together with the very experienced Mr Gidarra, Mr Conagher quickly became one of the carrier’s go-to men to fly in and out of remote backcountry airstrips all across the Outback.
Mr Gidarra finally retired in 1992 after 45 years with the carrier, and Mr Conagher became the new Chief Pilot and Vice President of Operations.
In 1998 Mr Stansbury died following a sudden illness. He surprised everyone when he used his will to order the company to become a jointly held venture between Mr Conagher and Mr Stansbury’s daughter, Dora Stansbury-Goodhardt. Mr Conagher was given 51% and Ms Stansbury-Goodhardt retained 49%. Despite having already lived in Australia for over 13 years, Mr Conagher was still a US citizen and never got around to taking Australian citizenship. He had to quickly apply for Australian citizenship in order to take formal control of the company.
Outback Air 1998-Present
The late Ted Stansbury was quite a character, beloved by many and serving as the grand marshal in countless Anzac Day parades throughout the years across Australia, and once even in Christchurch, New Zealand.
However Mr Stansbury’s handling of Air NT’s finances, while not exactly horrible, weren’t entirely spot on either. Yank Conagher quickly found the company was in substantial debt, though thankfully not irreparably so. To get things back in balance Mr Conagher had to sell off the Beechcraft Starships and replace the Beechcraft Super King Air 250s with a set of leased Cessna 208B Grand Caravans. While the Cessnas were slower and had less range than the King Airs, they carried more passengers and also cost much less to purchase and operate.
Mr Conagher also retired the last of the company’s Douglas DC-3s and Douglas DC-4s. One of the DC-4s was cleaned up and placed on static display at a roundabout near the Alice Springs-ASP airport, to serve as a tribute to Mr Stansbury. These aircraft were replaced by several leased de Havilland Canada DHC-8 Q200 turboprops.
To better reflect the fact that the airline was now flying across several states in the Australian Outback, Mr Conagher renamed the airline as Outback Air, but otherwise the company retained the 1977-era Kangaroo-Sun logo. On the carrier’s new Q200 flagship aircraft, a replica of the original 1947 Alice Air Charters Boxer logo was placed between the front door and the cockpit as a further tribute to the company’s late founder.
In 2016, Outback Air purchased two new de Havilland Canada DHC-8 Q400QCC quick change combi turboprop aircraft, increasing Outback Air’s ability to deliver up to 50 passengers alongside heavier freight loads to and from mining sites and aboriginal communities.
OzJet 2018-Present
Also in 2016, while Mr Conagher was attending the Farnborough Air Show in the UK to make his previously planned purchase of the two DHC-8 Q400s, Mr Conagher also arranged for the purchase and delivery of several Bombardier CS100s and Bombardier CS300s jet airliners.
It was by no means an impulse purchase; Mr Conagher had been planning for years to break into the national jet airline market using a low cost carrier (LCC) model, and was working to obtain gate access at several Australian airports beyond Alice Springs-ASP and Darwin-DRW. Mr Conagher originally wanted to use Embraer E190s and/or E195s as a springboard into the national airline scheme of things. But his visit with Bombardier left him convinced that the new CSeries jets were truly game changing equipment. So he signed off and made a down payment for an audacious though tentative order for 30 aircraft - 15 C100s and 15 C300s - without having actually arranged for the necessary financing or gate access rights, a rather risky thing to do.
He initially struggled to fund the outright purchase of his aircraft order, but managed to make a deal with JetStream Aerospace to simply lease them instead. After numerous delays and events that nearly scuttled the project, in 2018 Bombardier entered into a partnership with Airbus that rebranded the Bombardier CS100 and CS300 aircraft as the Airbus A220-100 and Airbus A220-300, respectively. Mr Conagher then established AirOz Pty Limited as a new holding company for his increasingly diverse aviation activities as the the first A220s began arriving.
On 27 April 2018 the new low cost airline OzJet officially began operations, with an inaugural A220-300 flight between Sydney-SYD and Melbourne-MEL, followed by an A220-100 flight between Darwin-DRW and Sydney-SYD. Over time, OzJet became a popular customer choice, aided by Mr Conagher appearing in TV ads and in print as the airline’s colorful spokesperson. By early 2024 OzJet was flying 28 aircraft to 18 destinations around Australia.
OzJet’s profitability ultimately helped both carriers bounce back from losses caused by the Covid 19 pandemic, and helped ensure that Outback Air would remain viable as well. During the pandemic, Outback Air also gained lucrative government contracts to expedite the transport of medicine, supplies and first responders around rural Australia during that difficult period.
Meanwhile, Mr Conagher set about updating Outback Air’s fleet, with newer equipment. At the 2019 Paris Air Show he inked a deal with Aria Aircraft Company to buy 6 Aria V42qc VTOL Quick Change combi aircraft, in a bid to replace the de Havilland Dash-8s. The V42qc’s ability to carry any combination of cargo and/or up to 42 passengers, along with its groundbreaking vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) technology, combined to make the aircraft an attractive and logical choice to use in connecting with remote Outback destinations far and wide.
Meanwhile, in 2023, OzJet began its first international air service to Denpasar-DPS in Bali, Indonesia, flying there from 6 Australian cities, which proved especially popular with the leisure passenger market.
As of 2024, David “Yank” Conagher continues to run both OzJet and Outback Air from the same hangar and offices where the company began back in 1947. He has indicated that he plans to retire within the next couple of years, but doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to do so just yet.
Destinations
Ozjet
OzJet flies scheduled services to the following destinations.
Note: All destinations listed are located in Australia except where otherwise indicated.
Adelaide-ADL, SA
Alice Springs-ASP, NT - HQ and Hub [ System Map Link ]
Ballina-Byron Bay-BNK, NSW
Brisbane-BNE, QLD
Broken Hill-BHQ, NSW
Broome-BME, WA
Cairns-CNS, Qld
Canberra-CBR, ACT
Darwin-DRW, NT - Focus City
Denpasar-DPS, Indonesia
Hobart-HBA, Tas
Gold Coast-OOL, Qld
Kalgoorlie-KGI, WA
Melbourne-MEL, Vic
Mount Isa-ISA, Qld
Perth-PER, WA
Sunshine Coast-MCY, Qld
Sydney-SYD, NSW
Townsville-TSV, Qld
Outback Air
Outback Air Destination Map (partial) [ Map Link ]
Outback Air flies an assortment of scheduled, charter and ad hoc flights to 130+ airports and landing strips throughout Australia, operating primarily from bases located at the following airports.
Alice Springs-ASP, NT
Broken Hill-BHQ, NSW
Darwin-DRW, NT
Kalgoorlie-KGL, WA
Mount Isa-ISA, Qld
Fleet
Current Fleet
OzJet currently operates the following aircraft.
Airbus A220-100 - 2018-Present
Airbus A220-300 - 2018-Present
Outback Air currently operates the following aircraft.
† = JStream original aircraft
Aria V42qc VTOL Quick Change Combi - 2024-Present †
Cessna 208B Grand Caravan - 1998-Present - Retiring 2025
Daher Kodiak 900 - 2023-Present †
de Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter - 1969-Present - Retiring 2025
de Havilland Canada DHC-8 Q200 - 1998-Present - Retiring 2025
de Havilland Canada DHC-8 Q400QCC - 2016-Present - Retiring 2026
Former Fleet
Outback Air formerly operated the following aircraft.
† = JStream original aircraft
Beechcraft Super King Air 250 - 1977-1998
Beechcraft Super King Air 250SM Combi - 1977-1998
de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drover - 1950-1970 †
de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter - 1956-1972 †
Dornier 328-120 Combi - 1995-2022
Douglas DC-3 - 1947-1988 †
Douglas DC-4 - 1947-1998 †
=Nota Bene=
A real life OzJet once existed 2005-2012 as a small scheduled and charter carrier. It originally was set to be a low cost airline, then later reimagined as an all-business class airline. The carrier passed through various hands before it was declared insolvent in 2012.
I simply repurposed the airline name, but everything else in this article about OzJet - the livery, route network, characters and other elements - are all items of my own creation.Outback Air and Alice Air Charters are entirely original brand names - or at least they neither brnad name came up in Wikipedia or Google Search before I used them. They are not based on any real life airline that I know of.
There is no historical record I’ve found to date of an airline named Air NT previously existing either. However, there is a Darwin-based not-for-profit organization known as Australian Independent Retirees, whose Northern Territory chapter coincidentally uses the acronym AIR NT. They seem like very nice folks, but my own version of Air NT is entirely unrelated to them.
Several years ago I wrote up a treatment for a proposed TV series to be set in the Australian outback, featuring a small aviation company headquartered at Alice Springs-ASP. That company was going to be named Air Oz. Nothing came of that particular proposal, so I decided to reuse some of the info written up for that old project in this article.
Ted Stansbury and David “Yank” Conagher were both named characters from that old story. Same thing with Billijee “Billy” Gidarra, although with a slight name change.Billy Gidarra is himself a fictional character, but he was based on a real life World War II Aboriginal fighter pilot, Warrant Officer Len Waters, who was the only Aboriginal fighter pilot (that I know of…) to enter combat during World War II, logging 95 missions. After the war he tried to start a real life regional airline himself, but was unable to get the funding and approvals to do it, so… he ended up going back to his prewar occupation, which was shearing sheep for a living. He did receive some accolades after his death, like a postage stamp dedicated to him, as well as a few parks and streets and such named in his honor. For the most part, after WWII he generally got the shorter end of life’s stick, which is a pity.
I might create a fictional aviation service, perhaps a scrappy charter service in outback Queensland, to give Mr Waters a better fictional outcome than he received in real life. Mr Gidarra at least had it better.The Aria V42qc VTOL Quick Change Combi aircraft mentioned in this article is an original, in-house made design created by me from scratch.
I’m a big enthusiast of VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) aircraft in general, and I’ve been watching recent developments in the areas of eVTOL (electric VTOL), Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and Regional Air Mobility (RAM). The Aria V42 series aircraft type is a concept aircraft I drew up in response to those trends.Several other aircraft depicted in this article are handcrafted, in-house made templates designed by me. These include the Daher Kodiak 900, de Havilland DHA-3 Drover, de Havilland DHC-3 Otter, de Havilland DHC-6-300 Twin Otter, and Douglas DC-3 templates.
All other aircraft templates displayed in the article were licensed from Norebbo and modified to feature liveries that were designed and painted by me.
All liveries depicted in this article were conceived and drawn by the Author.
All Aria aircraft templates displayed in this article are fictional aircraft, whose original templates were drawn by the Author.
The Daher Kodiak 900, de Havilland DHA-3 Drover, de Havilland DHC-3 Otter, de Havilland DHC-6-300 Twin Otter, and Douglas DC-3 aircraft templates are all original, in-house created content created by the Author.
All other aircraft templates depicted in this article were purchased from Norebbo under license and augmented by the Author for display. Blank side view templates of these aircraft are available for purchase through ShopNorebbo.
Route Maps were created using Great Circle Map.