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

 Qantas Airways said Thursday pandemic cost it 4 billion Australian dollars ($2.9 billion) in revenue in last fiscal year and warned that international travel won't resume before mid-2021.

Australian airline reported an underlying profit before tax of AU$124 million ($89 million) for fiscal year that ended on June, a 90.6% decline from AU$1.33 billion profit posted a year before.

carrier’s statutory net loss for latest year was AU$1.96 billion ($141 billion).

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said international routes would t reopen until middle of next year and U.S. services might depend on a COVID-19 vaccine becoming widely available.

Routes would be reopened country by country, depending on virus spre.

“New Zealand is an obvious example that should potentially open up relatively fast compared to or countries around world,” Joyce said.

“ U.S., with level of prevalence re, 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 middle or end of next year and countries like U.S. may be first country to have widespre use of that vaccine, so that could mean that U.S. is seen as a market by end of ‘21,” he ded.

first six months of 2019 h been toughest conditions in Qantas’ 100-year history, Joyce said.

airline recorded a AU$771 million ($554 million) pre-tax profit in first half of fiscal year before pandemic struck.

Joyce said Qantas was in a better financial position than many airlines to survive pandemic.

“We have lowest cash burn, we believe, of any major airline group in world,” Joyce said.

“AU$40 million ($29 million) a week is still a big number, but that is a lot lower than or airlines in rth America and Europe and that gives us longest runway of any airline group out re, well through to ’21 and into ’22 and we may need that,” he ded.