Qantas Airways said Thursday the pandemic cost it 4 billion Australian dollars ($2.9 billion) in income in the last monetary year and cautioned that international travel won’t continue before mid-2021.
The Australian aircraft announced a fundamental benefit before tax of AU$124 million ($89 million) for the monetary year that finished on June, a 90.6% decay from the AU$1.33 billion benefit posted a year prior.
The carrier’s statutory net loss for the most recent year was AU$1.96 billion ($141 billion).
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said global courses would not return until the center of one year from now and U.S. services may rely upon a COVID-19 vaccine getting broadly accessible.
Routes would be returned nation by nation, contingent upon virus spread.
“New Zealand is an obvious example that should potentially open up relatively fast compared to the other countries around the world,” Joyce said.
“The U.S., with the level of prevalence there, is probably going to take some time. It’s probably going to need a vaccine before we could see that happening,” he said.
“We potentially could see a vaccine by the middle or the end of next year and countries like the U.S. may be the first country to have widespread use of that vaccine, so that could mean that the U.S. is seen as a market by the end of ‘21,” he added.
The initial a half year of 2019 had been the hardest conditions in Qantas’ 100-year history, Joyce said.
The airline recorded an AU$771 million ($554 million) pre-tax benefit in the first half of the financial year before the pandemic struck.
Joyce said Qantas was in a superior financial position than numerous aircrafts to endure the pandemic.
“We have the lowest cash burn, we believe, of any major airline group in the world,” Joyce said.
“AU$40 million ($29 million) a week is still a big number, but that is a lot lower than other airlines in North America and Europe and that gives us the longest runway of any airline group out there, well through to ’21 and into ’22 and we may need that,” he added.