Qantas International Flights Won’t Happen Until July 2021

91 percent profit dive while announcing that 6,000 more job losses

Qantas has recently shared FY20 results and has reported a 91 percent profit dive while announcing that 6,000 more job losses would be there across the business. The company has also reported that Qantas International Flights won’t be returning until July 2021.

 

The CEO of Qantas, Alan Joyce, said, “Recovery will take time, and it will be choppy. We’ve already had setbacks with borders opening and then closing again. But we know that travel is at the top of people’s wish lists and that demand will return as soon as restrictions lift. That means we can get more of our people back to work.”

 

The news of Qantas International Flights not returning to normal comes a few days after the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stated that a travel bubble between the two countries wouldn’t happen anytime soon. She had said, “One of the things we said as part of our criteria was that anywhere we have quarantine-free travel, they have to be free of community transmission for a period of time, 28 days. That is going to take a long time for Australia to get back to that place.”

 

In addition to the sad news of Qantas International Flights not returning anytime soon, the company also announced that the company made an AUD 771 million profit before tax in the first half of FY20. It changed when travel demand collapsed, and the borders were closed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The company made a profit of AUD 840 billion in the last financial year. In comparison, it made an AUD 1.96 billion net loss in FY20.

 

The reality of the stoppage of Qantas International Flights is bad for shareholders as well because the company has put a hold on paying out dividends to the shareholders to preserve the cash flow.

 

Talking about the resumption of Qantas International Flights in a post COVID world, Joyce said, “We’ll have to operate differently in response, and that will mean more hard decisions. There will be some reinvention required to succeed in a different world.”

 

The news of Qantas International Flights not resuming till July 2021 comes a few weeks after IATA stated that international travel wouldn’t return to pre-COVID levels till 2024.