FROM THE CEO

Aviation has made incredible technology gains over the past century. In 1947 a flight from Australia to England took four days with seven stops; now we fly direct from Perth to London in 17 hours.

Other evolutions haven’t been as swift. Take gender equality. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that women were able to become pilots at major Australian commercial airlines. Today, globally, about 5 per cent of pilots are female. At Qantas we’re doing slightly better at 7 per cent but we’re a long, long way from where we need to be. To create a pipeline of new pilots for us and the wider industry we opened the Qantas Group Pilot Academy in Toowoomba in January 2020, just weeks before COVID started closing borders. The Academy kept running through the pandemic because we knew demand for pilots would be strong in the longer term. So far, 20 per cent of its graduates have been women and we want to grow this to 40 per cent over the next few years. We expect about 100 graduates will join the Group this year as our recovery continues and we begin renewing our domestic fleet with the arrival of our first Airbus A220s later this year.

Qantas has been a big beneficiary of the diversity of our teams and it’s a core contributor to our success. Put simply, greater diversity means we’re more reflective of the community we serve, giving us more perspectives to draw on and helping us be a better airline. It’s why we’ve had a long history of supporting diversity and inclusion, from promoting Indigenous Australian culture around the world with our much-loved flying art series to more than two decades of support for the Sydney Mardi Gras. We’re proud to continue that support with our major sponsorship of the Sydney WorldPride Festival. On 22 February we’ll operate a dedicated flight from Los Angeles to Sydney to help revellers in the US join the party. You can read more about the festival in this edition, along with plenty of travel inspiration to plan your next trip.

Thanks for choosing Qantas.