of South Australia and Western Australia's MacRobertson Miller Airlines (MMA). The Tamworth-based East-West Airlines also had a growing fleet of F27s and ambitions to expand beyond its network of routes connecting NSW country centres with Sydney. As the 1980s dawned, Ansett and TAA were incurring heavy losses on many of their regional routes. A downturn in passenger traffic caused by an economic recession resulted in both carriers reviewing their networks. As the government-owned carrier, TAA faced political pressure from the conservative Fraser Liberal Government to control its costs, with some government members in favour of privatising the airline. TAA already co-operated with East-West Airlines, with passengers on TAA's capital city network interchanging onto regional routes operated by East-West (and vice versa). This was necessary for both airlines to compete against Ansett, which owned its own regional subsidiaries. By 1981, TAA had decided to withdraw its Fokker F27s from service and proceeded to formalise agreements with smaller carriers to take over those routes. This saw East-West's own fleet of F27s assume the services from Melbourne to Wynyard and Devonport during February 1982, competing against Ansett. The future of Burnie Airport was under the microscope by the mid-1980s, as noted above. Devonport's upgrade to jet standard had been completed by 1983, and both East-West and Ansett (through subsidiary Air NSW) were operating Fokker F28 Fellowship twinjets to Sydney, and a mixture of F28s and F27s to Melbourne. The introduction of jets (and the route to Sydney) from Devonport caused Wynyard's passenger numbers to decline and the viability of both airlines servicing both airports was questioned. Wynyard's existing main runway 08/26 was too short for F28 operations, and was unable to be extended due to roads and sports fields at the western boundary and a residential area to the east. With the new jet-standard runway 09/27 constructed to the south of the existing runway, the airlines were placed under political pressure to upgrade their equipment from the F27 in order to justify the cost of construction. Ansett responded by scheduling an Air NSW F28 to operate the breakfast flight to Melbourne on two days a week, with the balance to still be operated by F27s. Also during 1987, a series of sales and takeovers resulted in East-West being bought by Ansett's parent company Ansett Transport Industries (ATI), and it became clear that both Burnie and Devonport Airports would be subject to some level