Qantas received 25 000 applications for 2 500 recently advertised jobs, according to CEO, Alan Joyce. “Qantas has a halo as one of the best employers in Australia,” said Joyce.
The airline let go 9 000 of its 30 000 employees during the COVID pandemic and has already managed to replace nearly a third of them.
In a video message apologising for the airline’s performance, Joyce previously said: “With some aircraft doing eight sectors a day, when you get a problem in the morning with somebody not turning up, that impacts all eight sectors during the day.”
He said the airline had had to deal with a 50% rise in sick leave during summer this year and had been repositioning staff to cope with the shortfall.
Since Easter, about 200 office staff have been working at airports and last month, 100 more volunteers were asked to step in at airports.
In August, the Qantas Group said it had made an annual pre-tax loss of AUD1,19bn (R14bn) this year. Joyce said this brought losses since the start of the pandemic to more than AUD7bn (R82,4bn) and lost revenue to more than AUD25bn (R295bn).
"…On a statutory basis, COVID cost us more money in the past three years than we made in the five years before that," said Joyce.
