Qantas Posts Profits Drop In 2024

Qantas has published its results for the financial year just gone, and after a turbulent year, they are quite fascinating.

Revenues were among the business’ more positive areas, increasing just over 10% to $21.9 billion.

Airlines worldwide have been reporting significant increases in their overall revenues despite other aspects of the business not performing to the same extent.

Lastly, despite revenue increases, the underlying profit dropped by some 16% to 2.08 billion. While still a significant number, the decrease was due to dropping domestic and international earnings.

For example, overall earnings before interest and tax at the domestic division dropped 16%, whereas the international division saw a 39% drop.

While not uncommon and nothing to be alarmed about, executives at the company say this came down to fares normalising and the continued adjustment of capacity. Moreover, Qantas says it’s spent more on initiatives to streamline its flying to benefit customers.

Such a performance shouldn’t come as a shock. The guidance for this earning season at Qantas was pretty much bang on with no major adjustments.

Across the financial year, Qantas increased on-time performance at its mainline brand by some 10 percentage points and 8.8 at Jetstar.

These operational performance improvements stem from the investments mentioned above, which involved overhauling the frequent flyer program, seats, digital platforms, and onboard amenities.

Qantas Group states that its focus over the past year has been on repairing a fractured customer relationship that destroyed the brand’s image.

As a result, the consensus is that Qantas is willing to take these drops to make the right investments to ensure that Qantas can be the national airline once more in which people take great pride. Off the back of the appointment of Vanessa Hudson, this has been the direction.

The domestic front was an important avenue as Qantas says it raced to provide more than 45,000 customers with free-of-charge flights following the collapse of Bonza and Rex’s capital city flights using the Boeing 737 fleet.

Domestic revenue is expected to increase in the first half of the next financial year, whereas international revenue will fall as they restore their market capacity. By the end of the 2025 financial year, Qantas expects the decline to slow, with eventually some recovery.