Qantas boss Alan Joyce wants COVID ‘hotspots’ defined
Alan Joyce said Qantas stood ready to assist in bringing Australians home as part of the boosting of quarantine caps.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has called for a “common medical-based definition of hotspots” amid continued border closures between states due to COVID-19 cases.
“What doesn’t make sense to us is we have states with low cases or no cases that are closed to other states,” Mr Joyce told ABC Radio
“NSW has shown we can keep things open and get the virus under control. It’s clear that politics is getting into this.”
His call comes as Qantas pushes its case for a broader border reopening, launching a petition in recent days.
Mr Joyce said Qantas stood ready to assist in bringing Australians home as part of the boosting of quarantine caps, but needed the government to cover the cost of fuel and crews.
“We’re burning $40m in cash every week. We can’t put any services on unless we can cover the cash cost,” he said.
“The caps in place today, you can potentially carry only 50 people each flight. The economics do not work.”
He said Qantas had been talking to the government about special flights.
Last month Qantas posted a $1.9bn statutory after-tax loss in the 2020 financial year.
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