Qantas nears multibillion-dollar shopping spree to shape its future

A multibillion-dollar shopping spree is not what you might expect from a company left battered and bruised by COVID-19 as badly as Qantas. But fresh from clocking up a A$3.72b loss over the past two years and being stripped of around $20b in revenue, that’s exactly what the airline is doing. CE Alan Joyce and his executive team are closing in on a deal to overhaul its domestic aircraft fleet, preparing to order more than 100 new jets with an estimated price tag of around $5b in a decision that will reshape its operations for the next three decades. “It’s a huge decision… which has impacts far beyond the current management at Qantas,” says Matthew Findlay, a director of Ailevon Pacific Aviation Consulting. “It will commit Qantas to a path which once you start to take, is very difficult to backtrack or change.” Joyce expects to announce his preferred jets models by the end of this year and to place a firm order with manufacturers by the middle of 2022. The first new aircraft should arrive by the end of 2023 and gradually replace Qantas’ 75 workhorse Boeing 737s and 20 smaller Boeing 717s over the following decade. Airbus’ A220s and Embraer’s E-Jet E2 type jets are in contention to replace the 717s and the Airbus A330neo and Boeing’s 737 MAX variant are in line to replace the existing 737 fleet. The new 737 MAX aircraft is back in contention following its recertification to fly in Australia in February after Boeing fixed a flight control program which caused two crashes, killing 346 people and prompting an almost two-year grounding of the jet worldwide. Renewing Qantas’ current fleet has been on the cards for several years as many of its 737s approach their nominal retirement age of 20 – 15 of them have been flying for 19 years and another six for 17, according to FlightRadar24 – but the pandemic delayed the decision.<br/>