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Qantas Airways looks at Asian opportunities; CEO pledges to restore capacity as quickly as possible
November 5th 2021
Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce, denied the airline is trying to profiteer during the industry recovery and said the company is trying to get capacity back “as fast as we can”. Read More » Commenting on conflicting media reports about airfares as borders open, Joyce told shareholders at the airline’s annual general meeting today that the company’s international re-launch was going to be patchy initially. He said the airline had experienced big demand from Australians in London and Los Angeles wanting to return home for Christmas but aircraft travelling in the opposite directions were relatively empty. Outbound travellers could find airfares of about A$2,000 return to London which is similar to pre-pandemic prices. Flights to India had proved to be the airline’s fastest selling fare sector as people headed home for Christmas but loads were lighter coming back to Australia. “So you will find attractive airfares out there,’’ Joyce said. “As you would expect, in peak periods like Christmas airfares always get higher. Qantas is not aiming to make profits out of this period of time. We are just aiming to get aircraft back in the air and to generate cash. And we will try and get as much capacity in the air as fast we can in order to achieve that.” Joyce said travel demand and confidence levels were high. Qantas had taken almost half a million domestic bookings in the past two weeks, compared with about 20,000 in a two-week period in August, he said. A recent international sale by Jetstar had sold 75,000 tickets in two hours. Qantas Loyalty also had seen its biggest single day for flight redemptions in October with more than half a billion points spent on 15,000 domestic international seats in just 24 hours. The airline had previously announced it is accelerating the return of its flagship A380s as it expands its international network. Joyce reiterated the airline hoped to return its Sydney-Los Angeles route to an A380 service in April and Sydney-London in July, which would free up 787s for expansion across the Pacific and into Asia. He said there also were expansion opportunities for Jetstar, with the LCC returning to the Korean market and A320neos freeing up 787-8s for expansion to new markets in Asia. “So there is a lot of great opportunity for both brands into Asia and to North America. It just will take a little bit of time to get the recovery, get us up and running again and making sure the demand is there, which we think it will be, before establishing that network,” he said. Qantas chief executive international and domestic, Andrew David, reinforced the airline’s interest in new opportunities in Asia, saying it continued to be an important market for Qantas and Jetstar. “As Alan commented, we are bringing our A380s forward. We have all of our 787s in the air and similarly our 330s,’’ David said. “We are looking at new opportunities. We are moving quickly to respond to demand. We have announced a number of routes that we are going back into ahead of the Christmas period and we will be progressively adding more in the coming months.”
