Qantas’ $378m investor gift after dramatic turnaround

QANTAS Airways chief Alan Joyce has announced the flying kangaroo will set-up its own flight academy to bridge a looming pilot shortage.

And the flag carrier will lavish another $378 million on investors through a share buyback as it reaps the spoils of its dramatic return to prosperity in recent years.

Mr Joyce made the revelations yesterday as the airline posted a net profit of $607 million for the six months to December – up 18 per cent from a year earlier.

The tally fell short of a record $688 million first-half haul the airline unveiled two years ago because it shouldered $119 million in extra costs.

That expense was to pay for redundancies and introduce the Dreamliner aircraft, Qantas said.

In initiatives aimed at its everyday shareholders, the airline will pay an unfranked interim dividend of 7c as well as forking out for the on-market share buyback.

It will take the total spent on buybacks in the past two years to $1.617 billion, with the number of Qantas shares issued cut by 24 per cent since October, 2015.

Qantas shares surged on the revelations, closing 5.9 per cent higher at $5.58 in their biggest one-day spike since mid 2016.

Mr Joyce said Qantas was moving to face a global pilot shortage by spending $20 million next financial year to establish a flight academy.

He is asking states for support, saying it could boost their economies and help provide pilots for the broader aviation industry – not just Qantas.

“We are looking to each of the states and territories, not only on what incentive packages they typically provide to other companies and other industries doing similar things that would be available to the Qantas Group, but what facilities they may have already,” Mr Joyce said. The initiative would “obviously need a functional regional airport”, he said.

“The investment initially for us will be up to $20 million and that will grow over time.

“We have a lot of partners that we will continue to talk to and, if they want to avail themselves of this, we will be happy to do that on the right commercial terms.”