News Backgrounder
Jobs go at Virgin Australia, Qantas reports profit decline
September 1st 2019
Qantas Airways continues to pile up cash with its announcement last month of a bumper underlying profit before tax of US$880 million for the year to June 30. Read More » The numbers were down 17% from the record results of last year, with 2018-2019 performance impacted by a $416 million increase in fuel costs and $104.4 million in foreign currency losses.
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Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce, defended the results given the mixed market conditions. “This result shows the strength of our individual businesses but also the strength of our portfolio as a whole. Even with headwinds like fuel costs and foreign exchange, we remain one of the best performing airline groups in the world.”
It was a different story at rival, Virgin Australia, where new CEO, Paul Scurrah, reported an underlying pretax loss of A$349 million for the group, well down on a year earlier. Scurrah said 750 jobs are to go, business divisions will be merged and a review of operations will be undertaken to return the company to profit. “It will take some time to get us into the position we are planning on getting into,” Scurrah said at the results announcement.
