The big chair at the helm of Launceston Airport has been filled - for now.
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After the shock resignation of former chief executive Hans van Pelt after less than a year in the job, former chief of aviation at Melbourne Airport Shane O'Hare has made the trip over the Bass Strait to call Launceston home as the interim chief executive.
It's almost like a homecoming for Mr O'Hare, who has fond memories of early days in his 40 year career in aviation, working for Qantas in Hobart.
"I started my aviation career in Tasmania in the 1980s when Qantas was only an international airline," he said.
"They didn't actually fly here, but we had a big state office and everything down in Hobart."
Mr O'Hare described his aviation and tourism career as "wide ranging", working across the country and across the world.
"The first part of my career was at Qantas, then operating a tourism airline operation in the Great Barrier Reef ... then I had six years at Ansett Australia, and then went to Star Alliance [an international airline group]," he said.
"Following that I spent the next 15 years or so in the Middle East.
"I had an airline turnaround job with Gulf Air in Bahrain, and then had seven years as chief executive of a private jet company, working for the Abu Dhabi government which was James Bond kind of stuff - literally."
Before taking the role at Melbourne Airport, Mr O'Hare came back to Australia, working with Qantas group running their people experience program and inclusion, diversity and wellbeing.
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Working as chief of aviation at Melbourne Airport during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was a great challenge, but the idea of coming back to Tasmania drew him in.
It's at Cambridge Airport that he learnt to fly with Par Avion - and while his pilot license has since lapsed, he's considering bringing it back at the Tasmanian Aero Club at Western Junction.
"I've always been a great ambassador for Tasmania since I lived here," he said.
"I've always thought, and now it's kind of coming to fruition, that Tasmania has global potential as a significant global tourism destination, and I think Tasmania is now in the right place at the right time to realise that potential.
"We've seen very strong tourism growth pre-COVID, just going crazy ... the mainlanders recognising that it isn't a bad place, so all those things are combining to create this incredible momentum around the state."
Mr O'Hare officially assumed the role on June 1 - however, COVID-19 induced border closures meant that he was unable to move to Tasmania for the role until Wednesday June 23.
Regardless, he's looking forward to the challenges ahead, seeing the challenge of COVID-19 as a potential opportunity - with 11 million Australians travelling internationally in an average year, the time is now to promote Northern Tasmania as a tourism destination - even with the constantly changing border situation.
I saw this as a great opportunity to come here and take Launceston Airport to the next level.
- Shane O'Hare
"Even recently, Tassie is open to Victoria again, and within 24 hours you have parts of Sydney shut - that creates enormous complexity for the airlines because they're coming in, they have to flex or contract their schedule accordingly which is very expensive, and the travelling market loses confidence over time.
"The good news is that 11 million people who would normally fly off-shore, a fairly high percentage of those still have this need to travel ... so some of that travel is going to be absorbed within the domestic market."
Mr O'Hare said he will continue to advocate to the airport's airline partners for more consistent domestic direct routes out of Launceston, including at more convenient times for business travellers.
"We need to make sure we're working very closely with them to expand their network offering into Launceston as much as possible," he said.
"They have lots of conflicting interest because they only have a certain number of aircraft so they need to put their assets in a network that makes sense and where they make money, so our job is to convince them that by providing more flights here, more non-stop flights to different cities, that we get a fair share of that business.
"Our job is to convince the airlines there's a good economic argument for that, with the support of the state government and Tourism Tasmania as well."
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