New airline sets its sights on Australia - as boss warns Qantas and Jetstar that he's coming for them: 'Cheapest plane tickets'

By MATT JONES, SENIOR NEWS REPORTER, AUSTRALIA Published: 07:10, 10 June 2026 | Updated: 07:10, 10 June 2026 The boss of Australia's next potential airline has guaranteed its ticket prices will be the cheapest in the country as it plans to be a 'disruptor' to Qantas and Virgin. In welcome news to travellers, Zinc Airlines founder Peter Kelly told Daily Mail his carrier will be a 'price leader' if it gets off the ground. 'We plan to price below Jetstar… we'll always undercut them. If they go down, we'll go down. We'll always be below them,' Mr Kelly said. 'We'll be up against Jetstar (a subsidiary of the Qantas Group). The low-cost operator. They're making incredible profits at the moment and are running at over 90 per cent load factor. 'That means very few of their flights aren't full. Only a couple of airlines in the world achieve that and one of them is Ryanair, who posted a profit a few weeks ago of 2.2billion euros after tax.' Mr Kelly, the former Qantas Loyalty boss, wants to copy Ryanair in Europe to a degree, with a relentless low-cost leadership and high-volume business model. But there's one thing that has to happen first. Mr Kelly needs to raise $200million to launch Zinc out of the new Western Sydney International Airport (WSI), and break the domestic duopoly of Qantas and Virgin. Peter Kelly - who previously worked at Qantas, Ansett and Jetstar - is fundraising to create a new airline, Zinc (concept render) Mr Kelly says Zinc will offer customers cheaper tickets to travel throughout Australia  In the week it was announced that WSI will welcome its first passengers on October 25, Mr Kelly said he's received interest from UAE investment groups since showing off plans for Zinc. 'We're at the early stages but the good thing is we've had a good response and that's important. Most of it has come from offshore,' he said. 'The first thing is money, the next thing is securing aircraft and that's the timeline we count back from.' Mr Kelly was also part of the team that helped create Jetstar and has extensively analysed Ryanair's operations to understand how they stay profitable while keeping costs low. He said while it won't take years to get started, it likely will take 'many months' to secure the investment into his carrier. He said 'when', not 'if', it happens, the airline will succeed and not fall into the traps that now-defunct carriers Rex, Tiger and Impulse did. 'If we can get the money, I'm not worried at all in the least bit,' Mr Kelly said. 'We'll have a really good product. A low-cost product still means you'll have a good flight experience with us. Mr Kelly said the opening of WSI is the reason he's starting up a budget airline in Australia  'We're very confident that we'll start up and be successful. 'Some airlines make a great deal of money. At the end of the day, Dubai was built on the back of Emirates, not the other way around.' Zinc will look to have a fleet of A320neos and will fly out of WSI to Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Adelaide. He said his carrier will be welcomed by the Aussie public who are looking for a good travel deal. 'I know their (Qantas and Virgin) playbook and we're not going to be welcomed but the government feels that there's a lack of competition in Australia and that's reflected with the ACCC,' Mr Kelly said. 'Every three months they do a report and they (ACC) say the airfares in Australia are higher than they should be and that's due to the lack of competition.' Mr Kelly said the main reason the likes of Rex, Tiger and Impulse bombed was due to the restrictions in using Sydney Airport, which won't occur at WSI. 'The main reason they failed was they could not get the frequency of slots available at Sydney Airport to be able to efficiently use their aircraft,' he said. The plan is to take on budget carrier Jetstar and offer more competition  'They had low utilisation of their aircraft and they also had old aircraft that burned a lot of fuel. Demand was never the issue.' 'Absent the opening of Western Sydney Airport, I would never be interested in starting up a new airline here. Everything works against a start-up (at Sydney Airport).' Mr Kelly said an airline's highest costs were airport fees – higher than the leasing costs of aircraft and fuel. WSI delivers significantly lower costs to airlines through curfew-free operations, more efficient airspace with fewer holding patterns, and competitive aeronautical pricing. The structural advantages provide carriers with faster turnaround times, maximised fleet utilization, and reduced per-passenger fees compared to Sydney Kingsford Smith. Managing director at Aviation Projects Keith Tonkin told Daily Mail the opportunities at WSI could make Zinc Airlines viable in the long term and result in cheap tickets. 'Competition definitely puts downward pressure on prices and Qantas and Virgin have a pretty cosy 98 per cent of the domestic market so competition is going to be helpful to the consumer,' Mr Tonkin said. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. 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