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Qantas is eyeing a windfall of $600 million or more from the sale of its land holdings at Mascot in Sydney, well above initial expectations, after some of the country’s biggest industrial landlords pitched in on a second round of bidding.

Leading the charge were offers from local platform Logos, industrial powerhouse Goodman, ESR Australia and diversified player Stockland, which is now headed by Tarun Gupta and has been steadily stepping up its industrial exposure.

With the second round closing on Friday afternoon, as many as eight parties were invited to put up their best offers. Local platform Fife Capital has also shown interest in the process as well as Aliro Group, which is led by David Southon. 

Also in the mix, according to senior sources, is Sydney Airport itself, which has been casting its eye over Qantas’ holdings, which stretch across almost 14 hectares in South Sydney, even as the ASX-listed airport operator comes to grips with a near $33 billion takeover led by IFM Investors. 

Adding another twist to the bidding, Logos has teamed up with AustralianSuper for its offer, after the pair joined forces in July as part of a club of institutional investors that acquired Qube’s intermodal logistics facility at Moorebank in south-western Sydney for $1.67 billion.

Logos is majority-controlled by Singaporean fund manager ARA Asset Management which is itself being taken over by ESR, a Hong Kong-based player. ESR’s Australian’s arm is headed by Phil Pearce, a former Goodman executive, who led ESR’s $3.8 billion acquisition of the Milestone logistics portfolio in April, the biggest ever direct property transaction in Australia.

First-round bids on the Qantas portfolio exceeded initial hopes of $500 million, with at least one bid thought to be well above $600 million.

On offer is a series of land parcels that Qantas has progressively accumulated since the 1960s. The property is being put up as a portfolio sale, or can be broken down into individual sites, with the real estate being sold as freehold or on a 99-year lease.

Qantas put the Mascot portfolio on the market, appointing Colliers to broker it, after a property review which confirmed the national carrier’s headquarters will remain in Sydney. The process also identified surplus land holdings and property revenue-generating strategies for Qantas, which has absorbed heavy losses through the disruption of COVID-19. 

The portfolio includes the sale and leaseback of the Qantas Mascot distribution centre, which is on 39,000sq m and is expected to fetch at least $165 million on a 10-year lease with options.

Even more appealing for aspirant buyers are the portfolio’s several development sites which are on shorter lease terms. The boom in South Sydney’s industrial market has made it fertile ground for a new generation of multi-storey logistics facilities. 

Qantas and Virgin have said they hope international travel will resume by the end of the year, a development Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said was getting closer as vaccination rates rise.

The money will cover an extension of the government’s $750 weekly payments to cabin crew and pilots of international airlines, primarily Qantas, that largely cannot fly. It was set to end in October but will now run until March.

It is intended to ensure the industry doesn’t lose its capacity to operate before borders reopen. Airports in 11 cities will also get a share of $64 million to pay for the costs of screening passengers and baggage, which is a constant cost regardless of how many planes land and passengers go through screening.

Mr Joyce said aviation was essential to ensuring the economy could recover.

“As a driver of so many sectors of our economy, it is essential that the industry is ready to ramp up operations when international restrictions are eased,” said Mr Joyce, who is also Aviation Minister.

“It’s also important that the sector continues operating now, to maintain the flow of exports and imports and bring Australians home from overseas.”

The airports that will get the money are in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and seven other cities. Qantas has previously said it plans to restart international flying beyond the New Zealand travel bubble by December 20 this year. Virgin Australia has also called for international flying to resume by Christmas.

Monday’s announcement takes the total amount of federal support for the industry to $5.1 billion through an array of programs since the pandemic began, but ground services companies that fuel, load, move and clean planes have been furious that they have been left out.

The sector has warned flights could be cancelled when travel resumes because, its industry body argues, it may not have enough staff to get planes in the air and passengers on board. The sector’s staff are eligible for $750 weekly coronavirus support payments in the same way as other workers, however.

“Hundreds of airline flights will be grounded this summer because thousands of critical aviation ground operations workers are leaving the industry,” an industry spokeswoman, Ann Maree Jackson, told a senate inquiry earlier this month.

A spokesman for Mr Joyce said the government was continuing to listen to industry and others and reviewing its pandemic response measures. He said having airlines ready to resume flying would have flow on effects for industries including aviation ground handling.

It is the gong of their careers. The Virgin Australia restructuring team at Deloitte achieved the international business turnaround of the year, the first time for an Australia-based company.

The news from the global Turnaround Management Association in New York went public overnight on Tuesday. Deloitte Partners Sal Algeri, John Greig and Richard Hughes have shown how, done right, administrators can be turnaround wizards – not corporate undertakers.

In just 67 days from when Covid-19 hit in April last year, the team rescued Virgin from a spiral dive as it haemorrhaged cash with debts of $6.8bn. They saved 6000 jobs and delivered the restructured airline to Bain Capital after a hotly contested global sales process.

“We never wanted this airline to fail, given the national importance to the competitive aviation sector,” said Algeri, national manager for T&R. “We didn’t want this to be another Ansett. We wanted this to be a success.”

There were 50 groups of stakeholders to wrangle, 2000 creditors to negotiate with during lockdowns, and the fleet had to shrink from nine types of aircraft to two. And all in a bubble of media scrutiny.

From the start four partners worked together: Algeri, Greig, Hughes and Vaughan Strawbridge, who has since left Deloitte. The four met every morning and every evening for half an hour, seven days a week for three months.

“They were all really focused, not an ego in the room frankly, just really supportive of each other,” says Paul Scurrah, CEO of Virgin at the time.

While Strawbridge and Scurrah fronted the media, behind the scenes each partner was dealing with the myriad of issues and running a sales process in parallel.

Virgin was based in Brisbane. Richard Hughes, who was head of T&R Queensland, and John Greig, Deloitte’s state managing partner, took over day-to-day operations, from flight schedules and engineering to cashflow.

“The business burned $200m a month prior to the appointment and it was pretty challenging,” says Hughes. “As administrators we are personally liable for the debts of the company that we incur post appointment so if there is a wages bill that turns up on the second day we are personally liable for it. We had a lot of skin in the game as a result.”

With an airline sales process running through a pandemic the pressure was on. “That is why we had to divide and conquer between ourselves, getting to major creditors or stakeholders to reduce the ongoing monthly charges,” Algeri said. “To hold so many parties together we knew we had to move very quickly or parties would lose confidence.”

“The big opportunities were in the leasing,” says Hughes. “We were able to get some extensions to the rent-free period and then power-by-hour arrangements for aircraft.” That meant costs would better match revenue.

The ghost of Ansett, its drawn out administration and liquidation, were ever present. “We spoke about Ansett,” says Greig. “And we made a promise between the four of us in the wee hours of the night before our appointment that we would simply not allow the outcome that happened with Ansett to happen with Virgin. It was a bit of an emotional moment I would say.”

Scurrah was one of several Virgin staff who had been at Ansett. Hughes says getting on the same page as Scurrah with staff and management behind him was instrumental to success. “I can’t say enough positive about Paul. Imagine you are a CEO of a very large airline, you essentially cede control to us. That can become pretty difficult. Paul strategically and from a team perspective figured out that this was the best way for the airline and put aside a lot of his personal interests to see that the airline got though,” he says.

Scurrah was already a year into transforming Virgin with a new CFO, Keith Neate. At one point the airline ran only one Sydney to Melbourne flight a day. The government knocked back a $1.4bn support package, arguing that five foreign shareholders owned 90 per cent of the airline. But they too were in trouble.

“We had taken an airline generating $6bn a year in revenue to zero and you don’t know how long that is going to last. You have lease costs coming. The decision to go into administration quickly was the right one,” says Scurrah.

Media had speculated KordaMentha (of Ansett fame) would be called in, but Scurrah and the board chose Deloitte. “The speed with which the Deloitte guys built knowledge was incredible. Within a week I was learning things from them about our own company – that’s how good they were,” says Scurrah.

From the Monday of the appointment, Algeri was calling aircraft financiers. “We had 70-plus parties scattered around the world. We got to Friday and say wow, there’s a lot to do but they are onside. Next minute, photographs of bulldozers in front of aircraft.”

Worried they were being overlooked, Perth and Adelaide airports wanted to make a point. Algeri was back on the phone to financiers. “It was all about trust. We told them that their aircraft were safe and then the next moment they are sort of locked up on a tarmac somewhere.”

Things calmed down but there was another task airside: to simplify the fleet. “When you have to hand back 70 aircraft overnight, it just doesn’t happen,” Algeri says. “It’s like a used car lot, parts of aircraft are intermingled. An aircraft comes with a titled engine and componentry and when you have to hand that back it’s got to have all that stuff on it. I take my hat off to the team at Virgin that were so methodical.”

For Scurrah a lesson from Ansett was communication. “For a three-week period there was just absolute silence. It was the fear of not knowing what was going to happen. So we communicated about everything, every day to everyone. Even if there was nothing to tell them.”

From day one, the sales process also took off with an information memorandum out in seven days. US investment banks Houlihan Lokey and Morgan Stanley were brought on board to maximise the pool of candidates. The buyer needed to show it would operate Virgin in a blue sky of uncertainty.

Every decision was made by the four administrators together. A shortlist of five was landed, then two and one. Greig remembers hearing from one of the five cut out during the process. “They wrote us a long letter, saying you guys must think there are fairies in the bottom of the garden if you believe what some of the other parties are telling you in terms of getting a translation done.”

When Bain Capital was announced winner, Greig says another letter arrived. Apparently there were fairies at the bottom of the garden, it stated.

Deloitte secured $125m from Bain in interim funding, which took on the financial risk for the trading business from July 1, 2020 even though the administrators remained in control.

One sour note is that according to reports at the time, Bain, having told staff that Scurrah would lead the airline, then changed tack after the creditors (including staff) voted to approve it as preferred bidder. Scurrah now runs rail group Pacific National.

What’s striking about the Virgin turnaround is the complexity. Greig was absorbed in Velocity, which was not in administration – Deloitte controlled it through Virgin’s 100 per cent ownership. With 10 million members and contracts with suppliers, the loyalty program had value.

Hughes grappled with how thousands of creditors could vote during Covid. There was no off-the-shelf solution. Deloitte turned to Halo, a system used in the firm for whistleblower claims, which it adapted for creditor claims.

“We think we have saved the estate $3m or $4m,” says Hughes. “At the final meeting we had 7000 people vote and we were able to tell people the answer to over 15 resolutions by the end of the meeting.”

Of the 6500 bondholders, two hedge funds became noisy protagonists but were unsuccessful. Algeri, Grieg and Hughes are the trustees of funds for unsecured creditors and, subject to objections being sorted, a return of 10-13 per cent is still expected.

Above all, says Algeri, the team kept its promise to ensure Virgin Australia survived with most employees. “Cemented in our minds forever is the smiles on their faces that we received and the thank you.” It took Algeri until February this year to see those faces in Brisbane when Melbourne’s lockdown lifted briefly. Unfortunately, the lockdown is back. “We now can’t go and celebrate in the same state,” Algeri says.

“Yeah, we haven’t had a beer together yet,” says Richard ­Hughes.

Qantas’s first commercial international flights in almost two years are set to takeoff on December 18, to London, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Singapore.

The services will depart from Melbourne and Sydney, and in the case of the London flights go via either Perth or Singapore.

The next day more destinations will come on line including Tokyo and Fiji, as well as flights from Brisbane to Singapore and Los Angeles.

Then on December 20, flights from Sydney to Honolulu will recommence potentially signalling a return to some semblance of normality for the travel industry.

Flights to New Zealand are also on sale for dates prior to Christmas, on the assumption the trans-Tasman bubble will restart by then.

According to the Qantas booking site, seats remained available for most flights although in the case of Sydney-London on December 18, the cheapest fares had all been snapped up.

Travellers should expect to pay between $1600 and $2300 one way for London and LA services, and slightly less for the return legs.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has made it clear the airline would require passengers to be fully vaccinated as a condition of boarding international flights, and depending on the destination, travellers may also need evidence of a negative Covid test within 72-hours of takeoff.

All services being sold carry the caveat of being “subject to government and regulatory approval”.

The federal government recently extended the ban on overseas travel to December 17 but restrictions were expected to ease once Australia’s vaccination rate hit 80 per cent of eligible people.

Mr Joyce remained hopeful flights would be able to resume a week before Christmas, and gradually ramp up in 2022.

Qantas recently indicated it was seeing enormous interest in the December flights with searches of those services tripling.

Hottest destinations included London, Los Angeles and Singapore from Sydney and Melbourne, as Covid-weary residents look to escape months of lockdown and restrictions.

Providing the flight schedule does resume as planned, Qantas was expecting to add Hong Kong to its destination list from February, followed by Bali, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Johannesburg from April.

A number of other airlines have also begun scheduling commercial flights on Australian routes from December 18, including Fiji Airways and Air Canada.

It’s not known as yet what quarantine requirements will be imposed for fully vaccinated travellers arriving from overseas or those returning to Australia.

Mr Joyce has indicated the continuation of mandatory hotel requirement would make the flights unviable but some form of home quarantine may be acceptable.

Further details of what will be required for international travel are expected to be revealed in coming weeks with foreign airlines calling for clarity and a streamlining of current airport processes.

• The federal government is reportedly sticking with a plan to introduce international COVID-19 vaccination passports as early as October.
• Such a plan could potentially allow Australians to leave the nation and for travellers to return without undergoing two weeks of hotel quarantine.
• Any vaccine passport system would be contingent on home quarantine, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

The federal government is reportedly sticking with its plan to launch an internationally-recognised vaccine passport system as early as October, with Canberra actively discussing how to integrate COVID-19 jab status with check-in apps already used by the states and territories.

The Age reports the federal government intends to unveil international COVID-19 vaccination status certificates in a matter of weeks, marking what could be the next step towards the reopening of Australia’s international border.

Such passports would prove a traveler’s vaccination status when attempting to leave the country, and could feasibly list the vaccination status of Australians hoping to return from abroad.

The federal government’s eventual goal is to partner such vaccine passports with home quarantine, opposed to the current requirement for returning travelers to spend two weeks in hotel quarantine once landing in Australia.

The proposed vaccine passports would be available in hard-copy form or through a holder’s phone, with discussions underway over the use of QR codes to complement the system.

The federal government previously honed in on the ‘Visible Digital Seal’ technology touted by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

In addition, Australian vaccine certificates, available via Medicare through a holder’s MyGov account, can already be added to a user’s digital wallet through Apple Wallet or Google Play.

Airline Qantas has already thrown its weight behind international vaccine passports.

In a statement provided to the paper, a spokesperson for Employment Minister Stuart Robert said further information on the passport scheme will be revealed soon.

Home quarantine a major goal

Appearing on Sky News on Tuesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said transitioning to safe home quarantine systems was a vital step towards a reopened border.

“To enable Australians to travel again – overseas, vaccinated Australians, for vaccinated Australians to come to Australia, for people to be able to move around – then home quarantine needs to work,” Morrison said.

South Australia has already launched a home quarantine trial for people returning from NSW and Victoria, implementing geolocation and facial recognition technology to ascertain the location of those isolating at home.

The Prime Minister also flagged his enthusiasm for vaccination certificates being used domestically, as Australia claws its way to the vaccination rate thresholds at which lockdowns and border closures will be avoided for lighter public health interventions.

Domestic restrictions for vaccinated travelers should be lifted first, said Morrison, who received an exemption from the ACT’s normal quarantine requirements after visiting Sydney over the weekend.

When you get to 80 per cent [vaccination rates], it says that domestic restrictions on vaccinated persons should be lifted,” he said.

“We’re not talking about willy-nilly movement of people who are unvaccinated across the country.

“We’re not talking about planeloads of COVID going from one state to the next, that’s a nonsense.

“That’s not what is under contemplation, and I don’t think any premier thinks that’s the case.”

The QR code-reading apps which are used by state contact tracing teams will also “need to be able to work to show whether someone has been vaccinated or not,” he added.

“We’re working with the states and territories to enable that.”

Existing state and territory property laws will enable business owners to refuse service to vaccinated patrons if they see fit, Morrison said.

With states and territories assessing how the existing vaccine certificates may be integrated into their check-in apps, all eyes are on the national vaccination rollout.

As of Monday, just over 39% of the eligible Australian population over 16 has been fully vaccinated.

Qantas Loyalty – which makes money selling airline loyalty points to banks, retail partners and other airlines – was the company’s fastest growing division before the COVID-19 crisis and has continued bringing in cash and earnings during the pandemic as the airline’s fleet sat idle.

Olivia Wirth, the division’s chief executive, said the group was now confident it could return to its lofty pre-pandemic growth targets for Qantas Loyalty, after in consumer spending saw activity on Qantas-linked credit cards bounce back to normal levels in the June quarter.

She said the key to driving that growth over the next two years would be creating more opportunities for Qantas’ 13.6 million frequent flyer members to collect points during their everyday spending on the ground – where two-thirds of points are already earned.

“We’ve got a very strong pipeline of new partners and businesses over the next six to 12 months, and we believe we’ll be launching them into a market which is going to see a strong response from consumers,” Wirth said.

“There’s some categories where we’re not as strong as others, so we think there’s upside in really focusing on industries and sectors where frequently flyer isn’t currently participating in.”

Airport ground handling companies have warned that flights will be stranded on the tarmac this summer because their employees are leaving the industry in droves after being excluded from the latest government aviation support package.

The Australian Aviation Ground Handling Industry Alliance (AAGHIA) said on Monday that flights could be cancelled between November and February due to a shortage of staff at third-party airport service providers, who load bags, check-in passengers, taxi aircraft on the runway, and conduct pre-flight safety checks.

“Hundreds of airline flights will be grounded this summer because thousands of critical aviation ground operations workers are leaving the industry,” AAGHIA representative Ann Maree Jackson told a senate inquiry into the future of aviation in Australia after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ms Jackson said that while the federal government last month announced a $750-per-week support package for airline employees, the scheme excluded 9800 employees at third-party specialist providers such as Dnata and Swissport.

“Most of our staff have sought secondary employment simply to be able to pay bills and put food on the table,” she said.

“Our concern is that when the country opens up and flying resumes, those staff may not come back to us - that secondary employment is a little bit more stable than aviation is at the moment - and therefore we have to recruit new staff. That lead-in time will take us six months.”

AAGHIA estimated that around 6000 of its members’ employees were stood down from work and between 3000 to 4000 did not qualify for government disaster payments because they did not live areas in lockdown.

Ms Jackson said the problem would be easily fixed by expanding the government support scheme to include workers at specialist ground handlers, until domestic and then international travel resumes from November.

AAGHIA wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister and Transport minister Barnaby Joyce on August 3 and was still waiting for a reply, Ms Jackson said.

The $750-per-week Retaining Domestic Airline Capability (RDAC) package was announced in early August with the aim of maintaining aviation industry skills and knowledge so airlines could quickly restart their operations when borders reopened.

Diane Brown, acting deputy sectary of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, said ground handling groups had not told the department it was concerned about flights being cancelled over summer.

“It’s true that ground support staff, where they’re not directly employed by airlines, are not receiving the same support as the airlines,” she said.

“It was a decision of government that RDAC apply to airlines. I’m not aware of all the factors they considered.”

Workers at Dnata, one of the country’s largest ground handling groups, were also unable to access JobKeeper payments because the company is ultimately owned by the government of Dubai.

Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine told the senate hearing there was a real concern that workers who were stood down without financial support would never return.

“The notion that these workers would flood back in is fanciful; we need to save them now, right now before they leave,” he said.

“[Australia] won’t have an aviation industry at all because it will be grounded for lack of skills.”

The TWU represents around 2000 Qantas ground handling workers whose jobs the airline outsourced late last year. The Federal Court has since found that Qantas’ move was illegal and the TWU is pushing to have the workers reinstated.

Virgin Australia will lease nine more Boeing 737s over the next six months as it anticipates a rebound in domestic travel when the country is vaccinated and hopes to claw back market share lost to Qantas following its collapse last year.

Australia’s second largest airline said on Friday the new planes will expand its mainline fleet to 77 single-aisle jets by March 2022, with the first to arrive in October, in time for the peak summer travel period.

"These extra aircraft are an important part of our planning and ensure we’re ready to ramp up flying and meet the pent-up demand for domestic travel as soon as the opportunity presents itself,” Virgin chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka said.

Virgin’s market share has fallen from around 37 per cent to 25 per cent after the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it into voluntary administration in April 2020 and prompted a major restructure of its operations.

That has allowed Qantas and its budget arm Jetstar to further their dominance and grow its market share from 60 per cent to almost 70 per cent, according to Macquarie research.

Ms Hrdlicka said Virgin’s extra fleet capacity will position it well to “reach our target share of 33 per cent of the domestic market” and fly to the destinations “our customers want with the frequency they expect”.

Virgin, now owned by US private equity giant Bain Capital, had 85 jets in its mainline domestic fleet before it collapsed under almost $7 billion in debt. The group had another 11 planes in its now shuttered international arm and its budget offshoot Tigerair before the pandemic.

The airline’s bullish outlook on domestic travel comes despite NSW and Victoria being in extended lockdowns due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said on Thursday he thinks the two states will be cut off from the rest of the country until the start of December.

Qantas said in its full-year results on Thursday that it expected to be flying at 38 per cent of pre-COVID domestic capacity in the September quarter, 52 per cent in the December quarter before rising to around 110 per cent in the first half of next calendar year.

Virgin said on Friday that it had also started planing the delivery of its first Boeing 737 MAX 10 aircraft from the middle of 2023.

The airline first ordered the new fleet of jets in 2012, however, delivery has repeatedly been delayed by the previously ASX-listed Virgin’s financial woes. Boeing’s new model jet was grounded globally in 2019 following two fatal crashes linked to a new flight control system. Aviation regulators, including Australia’s, have since cleared it to return to the skies.

• Virgin Australia has announced plans to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for all staff, with frontline workers jabbed by mid-November.
• The airline’s bottom line has been ravaged by the pandemic and border closures, prompting CEO Jayne Hrdlicka to say vaccines are “the only solution”.
• The plan is yet to be finalised, but the airline now joins rival Qantas and regional carrier Alliance Airlines in its plans to make the jab a staff requirement.

Virgin Australia plans to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for all frontline staff by November, joining the ranks of local carriers hoping to cut the coronavirus risks faced by both employees and passengers.

In a Monday statement, Virgin Australia proposed to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for flight, ground, and airport crew from November 15, with jabs a requirement for office staff from March 2022.

The plan will be presented to employees and unions for consultation, the airline said.

Employees with medical exemptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis, with the airline also promising to run an education program to explain the overwhelming benefits of vaccination.

The carrier’s final policy position will be revealed later this month, but Virgin Australia says over 75% of its frontline workforce has already received at least one vaccine dose.

Virgin Australia, which posted a $3.1 billion loss for the 2020 financial year, has been ravaged by the pandemic and international border closures.

With high national vaccination rates flagged as the ticket out of on-again, off-again lockdowns and international isolation, Virgin Australia CEO Jayne Hrdlicka said driving jab rates is essential.

“Vaccination is the only solution to the situation Australia currently finds itself in, and something we have determined is vital to keep our team safe, given the high public exposure most of them encounter day to day,” she said.

With its pledge to vaccinate all staff, the company has pulled itself into line with rival carrier Qantas and fly-in, fly-out operator Alliance Airlines.

Like Qantas, Virgin Australia also plans to incentivise vaccination for passengers.

Its long-heralded VA-X and Win program, which promises rewards to staff and passengers who can prove they’ve been vaccinated, will come into effect next week, the airline said.

In June, Virgin Australia said the program would award one vaccinated traveler with a million Velocity Frequent Flyer Points, enough for a lengthy around-the world trip.

Dozens of free business class flights could be included as minor prizes, the airline added.

The ASX-listed group launched a Sydney-Melbourne jet service in March, followed by flights to the Gold Coast and Adelaide, after securing $150 million in private equity funding to challenge Qantas and Virgin Australia on domestic air services.

Rex, which flies to around 60 regional and rural destinations, has leased six Boeing 737s and in June said it would fast-track the delivery of four more jets from the end of 2021 to September after receiving a better-than-expected response to its new services.

But on Tuesday Rex’s deputy chairman, John Sharp, said the airline had delayed delivery of those four planes until it knew it could operate without border restrictions or lockdowns.

“We’ve always said that we’ll scale up and scale down according to the circumstance,” Mr Sharp said, after the group reported an underlying after-tax loss of $12.7 million for the 2021 financial year.

“So we’ve delayed those [planes] until such time as things return to normal.”

Mr Sharp said the new jets would probably arrive by the middle of 2022, but warned the outlook for the travel industry remained highly uncertain despite the progress of Australia’s vaccine rollout