Qantas expects global travel won't resume until mid-2021

Qantas said Thursday the pandemic cost it A$4b ($2.9b) in revenue in the last fiscal year and warned that international travel won't resume before mid-2021. The Australian airline reported an underlying profit before tax of AU$124m ($89m) for the fiscal year that ended on June, a 90.6% decline from the AU$1.33b profit posted a year before. The carrier’s statutory net loss for the latest year was AU$1.96b ($141b). Qantas CE Alan Joyce said international routes would not reopen until the middle of next year and US services might depend on a COVID-19 vaccine becoming widely available. Routes would be reopened country by country, depending on 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 US, 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. Joyce said Qantas was in a better financial position than many airlines to survive the pandemic. “We have the lowest cash burn, we believe, of any major airline group in the world,” Joyce said.<br/>