Qantas компаниясынын башкы директору COVID, вакцина жана авиация

Алан Джойс:

Yeah. We’ve had some good dialogue with the States about the different parameters, about putting in a system that gives a bit more certainty. I will say before we get into that Peter, what we’re seeing each time is that the market’s getting stronger and stronger each quarter. Actually now I’ll go through the financial year, in the first quarter of the current financial year, we were at 20% of pre COVID capacity levels. Second quarter, we got to 40. Third quarter, we got to 60. We’re planning on being 80% or above for the last quarter. And the demand is improving all the time. But despite the stop and start, people are getting comfortable with what the situation is around borders. They’re traveling. And then each time it looks like when the borders are closed, it’s for a shorter period, the rebound is faster, and more rapid.

And so we’re pretty optimistic about where the domestic demand profile is. Now, should we be at a hundred percent plus? Absolutely. Do we want to get there faster? Absolutely. Will certainty on the borders get us there faster? Absolutely. So what we’ve said to the Premier is let’s have potentially three things in play. The first is a protocol where you, until the vaccine’s rolled out to all the vulnerable groups, that you have a system in place where you can get people home to their home States. But give those 24, 48 hours to allow us to have that guarantee. And we’ve got good reaction, I think, from all the States on that.

Second thing we’ve said in line with the Business Council of Australia, is that when we get to vaccinating all of 1b, why would we need to close the borders down again and can we have some certainty and guarantee that because we’ve covered hotel quarantine and hospital workers, there’s no need to, and that we should be okay at that stage. And again, I think this is being worked through National Cabinet and the AHPPC.

And then the third thing that we said when it comes to borders is relating to international, which is then what does the opening of international look like and what is the framework that goes around that? The vaccination requirements, the testing requirements, the quarantine requirements?

And let’s give a certainty on that because that will allow us to open up international faster when that system is in place.

Петир:

Right. Yeah. And I’d like to come and address international specifically a bit later on Alan if I could, but just staying with domestic, and I should say I had my first flight last week and it’s just a bit scary going to the airport and really not knowing what to do anymore. But I mean, you’re talking about the passenger demand. It’s obviously coming back. It’s obviously not there yet in full. You’ve had to, I guess, play it very much by ear in terms of revenue management with the pricing. Pricing seems to be holding up reasonably well. You’ve obviously got a massive amount of cheap fares in the market, but are you seeing a revival in terms of yield across the board domestically?

Алан Джойс:

We are seeing that the demand yields hold up pretty well, but we have been out there stimulating the market. What we always said is that for some time we’ll be managing the business on a cash basis. That means that we just have to cover the operating costs of the operation, to get our pilots, our cabin crew, our staff back to work. And a lot of the overheads we’re taking as sunk, they’re there anyway, even if you don’t fly the aircraft. It’s better, as we say, to earn a dollar in the air then to lose a dollar on the ground, but that’s been our philosophy and we’ve gone out there with some amazing promotions. We’ve also had the government’s scheme to promote tourism. That’s been very successful. It’s generated huge volumes of demand, places like Cairns, a place like the Gold Coast. And we went everywhere else with everywhere else sale, to generate huge volumes of demand around those leisure markets.

I wouldn’t take out say, Peter, I mean there are… Not one size fits all in domestic at the moment. What’s actually gone back to pre-COVID levels is the fly in, fly out market. That’s really, really solid and really big. The freight market is bigger than it was before COVID, and then in the domestic market, the leisure market is back to where it was before COVID in the intakes that we’re seeing coming in. And it’s really the recovery that we’re waiting for in the corporate, the SME market. We’re seeing that just lag the leisure market by three or so months. And so we’re seeing it coming back, as people are coming back for their offices. Now we’ve got most of our people back here in Mascot now.

A lot of other companies are doing the same thing. That’s the first move. And then we tell people to travel. I’ve traveled quite a bit in the last few weeks, and I don’t think it’s scary to go through the airport because I think it’s just back to normal just about. If you’re in our lounges, we’ve opened up 33 of our 35 domestic lounges, and we’re finding that they’re actually filling up. The reason why we’ve opened up the Qantas Club in Sydney and Melbourne is because the Qantas business lounge is full, and we needed to open up our other lounges. That’s how good the volumes are.

So you have to wear the masks, the masks are there at the terminal and on the aircraft, but the system is very similar as to what it was beforehand. And I think there’s a lot more people at the terminals, and every day it feels more normal than it was previously.