Qantas has posted its FY20 results, revealing a 91 per cent profit dive and the announcement of 6,000 more job losses across the business. The company also reports that Qantas international flights are unlikely to return until July, 20201.
Qantas international flights July 2021
As part of its FY20 results Qantas announced its international flights are unlikely to be up and running again until July, 2021. However, the company did say it may be earlier for Trans-Tasman flights.
“Recovery will take time and it will be choppy. We’ve already had setbacks with borders opening and then closing again,” Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said in a statement.
“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.
Earlier this month New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern said that a travel bubble between the two countries is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
“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,” she said on The AM Show in New Zealand.
“That is going to take a long time for Australia to get back to that place.”
Huge Qantas profit loss
Qantas international flights weren’t the only loss this week.
The announcements, posted on the ASX on Thursday, are a glaring reminder of how hard COVID-19 has hit the business. According to the ASX posting, Qantas made a $771 million underlying profit before tax in the first half of the FY20 financial year. This changed with the with the collapse of travel demand and border closures.
While Qantas made an $840 billion profit in the last financial year, it has now made an $1.96 billion net loss in FY20.
According to Qantas these results were also impacted by the $1.4 billion non-cash write down of assets such as the A380 fleet. It’s pandemic restructure, including redundancies, also cost the business $642 million in one-off costs.
The underlying profit of the company is down to 124 million, a 91 per cent drop from $1.33 billion in FY19.
Qantas has put a hold on paying out dividends to share holders in order to preserve cash flow.
More redundancies
The announcement reiterated the planned 6,000 job cuts that were announced back in June. 4,000 of these redundancies will be finalised by September and a further 20,000 employees will remain stood down for the foreseeable future.
The redunandancies make up roughly 20 per cent of Qantas’ workforce.
“We’ve had to make some very tough decisions in the past few months to guarantee our future,” said Alan Joyce in a statement.
“At least 6,000 of our people will leave the business through no fault of their own, and thousands more will be stood down for a long time.”