Predictions of when international flights may resume/bans lifted

[oznflfan]

It is the hotel quarantine which is tempering our booking flights.
I am still going to see what specials , if any , arrive in Jan 21 for end of 2021

Be awesome if Qantas did some discount QFF redemptions for International Flights 2021 or 2022, historically they did 25-50% off every 9 months or so. I can always hope................................

 

[jgreenspoon]

It is the hotel quarantine which is tempering our booking flights.
I am still going to see what specials , if any , arrive in Jan 21 for end of 2021

our June/July flights to Hawaii were the cheapest I’ve ever seen. We’ve been going every year for 10 years, the return leg was only $180!

they’ve now got the 72 hour negative pre flight test requirement for no quarantine, it will be interesting to see how it goes

 

[Seat0B]

It is the hotel quarantine which is tempering our booking flights.
I am still going to see what specials , if any , arrive in Jan 21 for end of 2021

yes me too, and also the inability to get travel insurance.

 

[blackcat20]

our June/July flights to Hawaii were the cheapest I’ve ever seen. We’ve been going every year for 10 years, the return leg was only $180!

they’ve now got the 72 hour negative pre flight test requirement for no quarantine, it will be interesting to see how it goes

Only for Us mainland at this time though.

 

[mrsterryn]

yes me too, and also the inability to get travel insurance.

Husband has definitely written off USA for him. It was always expensive for him but now...... So he will probable just end up with the reciprocal countries I think

 

[kelvedon]

Yup it is really depressing how we aren't working together as one country.

I agree. Apparently we are no longer Australians, and have returned to the collection of egocentric states that existed pre Federation.

 

[RAM]

I can’t imagine what’ll happen to flagship airlines, even those with heaps of money behind them if the international restrictions continue to be as strict as they currently are. I suppose the arabs will be right considering they still have services arriving into the country and many other places around the world but I can’t imagine how Qantas will fare. I hope the government concessions are enough to keep em going at the current limited capacity.

If Q had not done the $1.36bn institutional issue on June 26th, 2020 then they would have had negative Net Tangible Assets as of June 30th their Preliminary Final Report revealed without drawing attention to it (ceteris paribus). See Pg 3 of August 20th announcement to the stock exchange. That is even before refunding $2bn+ of tickets sold for flights that will never leave.

Net Tangible assets per ordinary share as at 30.6.20 = $0.17c

Institutional raising of cash per ordinary share as at 26.6.20 = $0.89c

So the position ex-raising would have been negative Net Tangible Assets of $0.72c per ordinary share = Not a good look. I do not recall any mention of this made before or during the Institutional capital raising nor the subsequent retail offering in July 2020.

Is this the reason all or even some of the A380s were not permanently retired as Q's NTA would have gone negative? Similarly in an intriguing move Q shifted 3 B747s to 'Assets held for sale' earlier in 2019/20 yet their value dropped less than $8m per plane. This left Q showing 4 B747-400/400ERs in active service & apparently at full freight (not written down) as at June 30th.

They were all then 'permanently retired' post June 30th. All 12 A380s remained on the B/S although they were written down by just over $1bn which included write down of spares (& simulators?). Not much of a market for A380 simulators (unless AFFers club together perhaps..... who wants a trolley when you can have a real flight simulator?)

If Q had gone ahead with the 2nd dividend payment - it would have gone close to negative NTA per ordinary share despite raising the $1.36bn. It was reported that the decision to not pay the 2nd dividend was only made in late June 2020 btw! Two guesses.

Q's around 2,000,000 sqm of leased property space (approx 90% on airport) worldwide (around 47,000 sq m = Mascot head office space) remains a massive cash burn that does not appear to be factored into the discussed $40m/week cash burn.

Even more surprising/amazing, worth of Ripley's Believe it or not, was 'Unavailed passenger revenue' aka tickets sold but not yet flown. Since Q had not formally cancelled its international flights despite removing them from the booking engine through to early 2021 - customers could not claim a refund. So with 100% of international flights grounded & around 70%+ domestic flights grounded - Q had $2,031m in tickets outstanding in 2020 vs a restated $3,167m in 2019. However, there was more than that, Q re-classified "where customers have made refund claims by 30 June 2020 these are no longer classified as unavailed passenger revenue and are reported as payables in the Consolidated Balance Sheet".

Meanwhile as Q only started (not completed) contacting passengers to say they were indeed entitled to full cash refunds after all (regardless of ticket bought) in mid June - then given the 8-10+ week delay in getting paid out - it is fair to say that this re-classification may be as much as $1bn.

Qantas offers refunds for flight cancellations

The ACCC says it is pleased Qantas has begun contacting its customers to tell them they are entitled to a refund for domestic or international flights cancelled or suspended due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

www.accc.gov.au

Some on AFF have been discussing that this 'full cash refund' is restricted to only certain tickets under Q's T&Cs. The ACCC disagrees and states that ALL tickets are eligible for full cash refund.

Qantas’ terms and conditions state that customers with fares booked on any of its domestic and international flights are entitled to have their fare refunded if Qantas makes a significant change to their flight, and Qantas cannot offer another booking which is acceptable to the customer.

The ACCC was concerned that Qantas’ communications to customers between 17 March 2020 and 31 May 2020 did not adequately inform them of their right to receive a refund.

In some cases, the ACCC considers Qantas’ emails may have encouraged these customers to cancel bookings themselves in order to receive a credit when many would have been eligible for a refund.

“We want to ensure that customers are aware that when Qantas suspends or cancels flights due to travel restrictions and fails to provide them with an acceptable alternative flight, they are entitled to a refund,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said.
....

“From our perspective, from the outset, Qantas did not communicate clearly with customers about their rights and, in a large number of cases, simply omitted they were entitled to a refund,” Mr Sims said.

That seems to be pretty definitive. The key point being the 'acceptable to the passenger' and as Sims says "an acceptable alternative flight". Point of reference Q kept changing a JetStar flight (non-refundable ticket) time for both legs about 8 years ago - I received a full cash refund as new times were not acceptable despite being same day (changed from early am arrival & late pm departure on return to late pm arrival and early am departure).

So as JB747 said many months back, not even Q will survive this without a Govt bailout. It does make me wonder whether a shareholder class action is in the offing over both the Institutional and Retail share raising? After all both were completed before the NTA position was somewhat revealed.

Then around July 13th; "Qantas have officially removed international flight bookings – bar New Zealand – from their website until March 28, 2021."

However Q did not officially cancel the flights - ostensibly not entitling customers to a refund under their interpretation. Then last week Q 'began' cancelling all international flights (ex NZ?) through to 28 March 2021. Which means there's around 5 months more bookings available for full cash refunds.

As the Fed Govt painted itself into a corner by refusing to provide a bailout to VA - I would not wait around with a Q travel credit but would demand a full cash refund especially if it was from an international ticket.

Unlike VA where around 80% or so of its business was domestic, Q has a much larger international millstone (its International fleet) which makes up much more than half by value of its fleet. Certainly there will/would be buyers of the domestic operations but I doubt there would be a single private buyer of the International Passenger business given the forecast global excess capacity through to 2024/25.

The QFF business is great BUT it was shown owing $2,817m as at 30.6.20 up from $2,462 the prevous year.

Added to the potential ticket cash refunds then Q has only around 1/2 the cash & equivalents required (including the much vaunted $1bn undrawn bank line of credit). Remember that Q shut down redemptions some time before VA did the same with VFF earlier this year.

Q has other demands for its dwindling cash balances.

15 weeks into the current financial year, without including ticket cash refunds made - the operating cash burn is likely to have been $700m+ or more. To put this in perspective this is more than half of what was raised back on June 26th in the Institutional raising. Add in the already announced redundancy costs (around $580m) plus their associated accumulated annual leave, long service leave entitlements (& superannuation) - Q's outlook is troubled.

BTW in its restatement of its B/S - a new $1,332m of lease liabilities appeared as of 30 June 2019 that previously were not on B/S (P43 of August release) with a value of $1,448m appearing as 'right of use' assets most likely airframes et al. Now curiously the figure shown on P17 is different - a typo/mistake perhaps?

One thing for certain - no airframes have the same value as they did 16 months ago, nor were they the same value as of 30 June 2020 vs 30 June 2019 (valuations published by recognised airframe valuation companies decreased massively) yet the value on Q's B/S increased as at 30 June 2020 adjusted for the partial write-down of A380s and $23m on 3 of their 7 B747s - Q did not appear to write down any other planes.

In 2018/19 Q wrote back the value of its shareholding in Hello World Travel as its share price had risen. In 2019/20 its share price fell lower than it had been recognised at in 2017/18 yet Q does not seem to have written that down either - nor commented on why it didn't whereas it detailed why it wrote it up previously in the 2018/19 Annual Report.

I suppose if Q had made additional write-downs then its NTA could have been negative.

October 11th will mark the first fortnight of the reduced JobKeeper payments - which could increase Q's cash burn by up to $4m/week if staff don't decide to draw down on Annual leave or long service leave instead. If they do in any numbers then that could at worst case increase cash burn by >$10m/week.

However earlier Q did suggest that the majority of the redundancies would be processed before September 30th.

_________________________________________​

The longer the international border closure continues then the more parlous the outlook for Q becomes. At best I'd say it is 50/50 whether Q remains an international carrier.

Travel bubbles (such as to NZ) do not lend themselves to making big profits especially as all the international carriers who have not bailed on flying into/out of Australia could reasonably lay claim to being entitled to operate through to NZ ahead of Q having an entitlement.

So whilst we will be flying again internationally one day, whether it could be on a plane with a kangaroo on its tail is uncertain.

 

[RAM]

The problem is too many people underestimate the flu.Watching a 23 year old pregnant woman die of the flu does change your mind.

Or knowing a super fit 37yr distance runner who was just jogging at less than half pace with his new girl friend doing City-to-Surf & had heart attack. Put down to having the flu just over 2 weeks earlier.

My own experience of flu when super fit (posted previously but can't find verbose description) saw my heart rate go ballistic within a few seconds of going above slight effort running about 3 weeks after 'getting over the flu'. Going from around 120 to 185 (from ailing memory) within 40 seconds of slight increase in pace was a lesson learnt. Did sub 4 hour Sydney marathon instead of sub 3.

 

[Tiki]

As a budget traveler who funds trips through miles and points, super cheap accommodations in cheap destinations; $3000 hotel quarantine is a deal killer for me. For that kind of money, I can travel around Indonesia or Turkey for 6 weeks, then go back home in either my own car or a sterilised whatever Uber service and sit at home for 14 days. I would not try to sneak out and I can padlock my gate against visitors (not that I get any normally anyways) and I would have stocked up on food before leaving.

The point I am trying to make is that I am sick of the blanket restrictions because others have broken the rules. Punish THEM 10x over and let the ones who follow rules have more freedom!

That and the instability of borders. I agree with Team Australia and I am sick of state premiers who are politicizing the borders and slamming them shut if someone in another state coughs. I live in Brisbane and this election does not have any hope as both candidates are apparently wanting to keep the borders closed.

 

[jb747]

Be awesome if Qantas did some discount QFF redemptions for International Flights 2021 or 2022, historically they did 25-50% off every 9 months or so. I can always hope................................

Those deals exist to get rid of excess seats. If QF restarts, and I think that if gets bigger by the day, they will do so very slowly. Excess seats will be avoided at all costs, simply by not flying them. Seats will also be expensive...there’s no way they’ll be wanting to let people who hold travel credits fly without paying more.

My current bet is that international is gone totally, from both QF and Jetstar. Domestic will end up being amalgamated into one airline. The group will go bankrupt, and that one airline will be purchased by another financial vulture. VA2 and QF2 will slug it out, until Rex wins.

 

[Pushka]

As a budget traveler who funds trips through miles and points, super cheap accommodations in cheap destinations; $3000 hotel quarantine is a deal killer for me. For that kind of money, I can travel around Indonesia or Turkey for 6 weeks, then go back home in either my own car or a sterilised whatever Uber service and sit at home for 14 days. I would not try to sneak out and I can padlock my gate against visitors (not that I get any normally anyways) and I would have stocked up on food before leaving.

The point I am trying to make is that I am sick of the blanket restrictions because others have broken the rules. Punish THEM 10x over and let the ones who follow rules have more freedom!

That and the instability of borders. I agree with Team Australia and I am sick of state premiers who are politicizing the borders and slamming them shut if someone in another state coughs. I live in Brisbane and this election does not have any hope as both candidates are apparently wanting to keep the borders closed.

The issue is that that punishment occurs after the event. And no one can tell who that "abuser" is, in advance. So damage done.

 

[jakeseven7]

That and the instability of borders. I agree with Team Australia and I am sick of state premiers who are politicizing the borders and slamming them shut if someone in another state coughs. I live in Brisbane and this election does not have any hope as both candidates are apparently wanting to keep the borders closed.

In QLD it is apparently not political (so we are told every 30 mins) as they have ceded ALL power to Dr Young, the CHO who has controversial views that are not supported by her medical peers.

The QLD gov apparently cannot do ANYTHING AT ALL nowadays except choose which biscuits to have at the monthly meeting with Dr Young

So whoever wins the State election needs to deal with the Dr Young and the structure of the QLD state of emergency response issue and the fact she is not collaborating with the Federal and other State medical teams... Some big issues to deal with...

 

[RAM]

Because the hotels are apparently full of domestic travelers being forced to quarantine because of state border polices.... which is why they are trying to get state borders open first then more slots available for returning Australians. Apparently it has to happen in this order.....

But NSW only has closed borders for Vic, and with over 20,000 hotel rooms sitting idle of 3 star or above - could cope with over 1,000 international arrivals daily and over 400 from Melbourne.

Has anyone found more information/detail on the domestic border exemptions being issued? The JetStar example of 40+ 'exemptions' was certainly new news to me. It would seem to virtually invalidate quaranting any domestic passengers given the ability to travel asymptomatic - more like an 'Animal Farm' quarantine system.

 

[HappyFlyerFamily]

But NSW only has closed borders for Vic, and with over 20,000 hotel rooms sitting idle of 3 star or above - could cope with over 1,000 international arrivals daily and over 400 from Melbourne.

Has anyone found more information/detail on the domestic border exemptions being issued? The JetStar example of 40+ 'exemptions' was certainly new news to me. It would seem to virtually invalidate quaranting any domestic passengers given the ability to travel asymptomatic - more like an 'Animal Farm' quarantine system.

I don’t know about the details of how 40+ exemption was given, but I do recall that when the Masked Singer went into quarantine/self-isolation, that those not positive and served 14 days in Melbourne self-isolation as per a close contact were allowed back into Sydney without doing a further quarantine/isolation.

 

[Tiki]

I don't understand how that works. Is she part of AP's cabinet? Can she be replaced by a new premier with someone who is more reasonable?

In QLD it is apparently not political (so we are told every 30 mins) as they have ceded ALL power to Dr Young, the CHO who has controversial views that are not supported by her medical peers.

The QLD gov apparently cannot do ANYTHING AT ALL nowadays except choose which biscuits to have at the monthly meeting with Dr Young

So whoever wins the State election needs to deal with the Dr Young and the structure of the QLD state of emergency response issue and the fact she is not collaborating with the Federal and other State medical teams... Some big issues to deal with...

 

[Tiki]

The issue is that that punishment occurs after the event. And no one can tell who that "abuser" is, in advance. So damage done.

The idea is that the punishment is so severe it is a strong deterrence to breaking the law. Maybe some may not balk if the only punishment is a fine and ordered into hotel quarantine. But if you make the fines really high and add some kind of demerit system like traffic offenses and drink driving offenses so the rich can't simply pay to break the law. Like they get their passports restricted for x months for every violation. Violations can include both exiting the house you are quarantined in and allowing others into your property. Maybe signs like the "Open for inspection" signs can be placed in front of a house to warn others that the residents are serving a quarantine period and the penalty to enter the property is $10,000. Dates and times should be spelled out. Like quarantine ends 26 Nov 10:00 am. Anyone breaking the rules before that time risks huge fines, having their visitors fined, loss of passport for x months. Then they won't be so eager to break the rules. Meanwhile those who follow the rules can simply stay home with no visitors for 14 days and then be free.

 

[jakeseven7]

I don't understand how that works. Is she part of AP's cabinet? Can she be replaced by a new premier with someone who is more reasonable?

She is not elected by the people, she is a public servant and so doesn’t sit in cabinet and will endure even if AP loses the election.

So yes, she can be reassigned, sacked, promoted etc just like you would an employee so to speak... apparently the department has been trying to coax her to move on (retire) from the role for years now...

I’m not sure how exactly you could move someone like this under a state of emergency, if that changes how the CHO role can be managed.... certainly VIC moved their deputy CHO on via a ‘reassignment’ very quickly when they were deemed to be not fantastic...

 

[Tiki]

She is not elected by the people, she is a public servant and so doesn’t sit in cabinet and will endure even if AP loses the election.

So yes, she can be reassigned, sacked, promoted etc just like you would an employee so to speak... apparently the department has been trying to coax her to move on (retire) from the role for years now...

I’m not sure how exactly you could move someone like this under a state of emergency, if that changes how the CHO role can be managed.... certainly VIC moved their deputy CHO on via a ‘reassignment’ very quickly when they were deemed to be not fantastic...

Thanks, you explained it very well. I wish they would reassign her so that she gets the same salary and can't claim discrimination. They need someone who can cooperate better with other state's officials in a position like this. We should all be working together. A few days ago, I read something about WA wanting to secede from Australia and be a seperate country. I am scared to death something like that could happen in any of our states. I am a migrant here so not sure if that changes my outlook as opposed to people who were born here. But I consider myself an Australian first and maybe a QLD'er for sporting events and such. I have been horrified seeing the way states are at each other's throats over this, the smugness over reporting Covid stats and all that. In this respect NZ has been doing a better job because they are seeing themselves all as one country instead of a bunch of states.

 

[Pushka]

The idea is that the punishment is so severe it is a strong deterrence to breaking the law.

Yes. I understand. But my observations are that the penalties are farcical and no deterrent.

 

[antycbr]

Thanks, you explained it very well. I wish they would reassign her so that she gets the same salary and can't claim discrimination. They need someone who can cooperate better with other state's officials in a position like this. We should all be working together. A few days ago, I read something about WA wanting to secede from Australia and be a seperate country. I am scared to death something like that could happen in any of our states. I am a migrant here so not sure if that changes my outlook as opposed to people who were born here. But I consider myself an Australian first and maybe a QLD'er for sporting events and such. I have been horrified seeing the way states are at each other's throats over this, the smugness over reporting Covid stats and all that. In this respect NZ has been doing a better job because they are seeing themselves all as one country instead of a bunch of states.

Thank you for your interesting perspective and something that our Beloved Premiers would be well wise to read.