Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has announced today that Qantas will be a smaller airline for the foreseeable future. He has also announced the axing of 6000 jobs with another 15000 staff stood down, more aircraft retirements and almost no international travel until July 2021. Those stood down will be stood down without pay.
The redundancies will affect 1450 office roles, 1500 ground ops including baggage handlers, 1050 cabin crew, 630 engineering jobs and 220 pilots.
Around 100 aircraft will remain grounded for at least a year. The fleet of A380s will be grounded for 3 years and will be stored at the Mojave Desert site. All remaining six 747s will be retired six months ahead of schedule and deliveries of new A321NEO and 787-9 aircraft will be deferred.
Mr Joyce also confirmed he will would continue to not take a salary and no executive bonuses will be paid this year. Executives have also been asked to take a 15% pay cut. The airline is also undertaking an equity raising of up to a $1.9 billion, the first in over a decade.
Mr Joyce says the airline plans to fly at 40% of domestic travel capacity from July, back up to 70% by the middle of next year, and back to normal in the 2021-2022 financial year. He also expects international flights in the 2021-2022 financial year to be half pre-COVID numbers, and at two thirds in the 2022-2023 year. S&P Global Ratings also predicts airlines won’t get back to 2019 levels until 2023.
ABC Australia reports that IBISWorld senior analyst Tom Youl says Qantas is burning through $40 million every week.
Qantas currently has a 30.6% market share in Australia’s international air travel, and 58.6% share in the domestic travel market.
Qantas Chairman Richard Goyder has asked Mr Joyce to remain as CEO until at least the middle of 2023.
2020 is the 100th birthday of Qantas.
The Australian financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June.