QANTAS: Alan Joyce reveals more than AU$100 million in flight credits than previously revealed.

Today, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce appeared in front of the Cost of Living Enquiry along with Steph Tully, CEO of Jetstar and Andrew McGinnes, Group Executive, Qantas. They received some robust questioning from the Senators on the committee, both in the room and online.

The battle was for new information that the senators wanted and repeating publicly available information to take up time by Alan Joyce and the other Qantas Group representatives. The probing questions seemed to come from all parties, although some, especially about the Prime Minister’s son and Chairman’s Club membership, seemed to have a political agenda to embarrass the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese.

In an Australian Senate Select Committee hearing in Melbourne today, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has confirmed that there is AU$370 million in outstanding COVID-19 travel credits, but that only accounts for Qantas bookings made by Australian residents.

The figure does not include some other credits. It doesn’t include money owed by Jetstar, also part of the Qantas Group. It does not include credits held by those who purchased tickets overseas for Qantas or Jetstar flights.

Under forceful questioning from Senator Tony Sheldon, Jetstar boss Steph Tully finally admitted Jetstar’s unused credits are about $100 million. She seemed to dismiss small credit holders by saying that 50% of the AU$100 million were for credits of AU$100 or less.

The airline group has previously refused to confirm whether the $370 million includes Qantas, Jetstar and overseas bookings.

2PAXfly Takeout

It was a bit of a scramble with the politicians determined to grandstand, or make their own political points. Alan Joyce did not want to reveal additional information, and occupied time repeating information that was already publicly available. However we did learn a couple of things. Firstly, that as already suggested by other commentators, the published AU$370 million in outstanding travel credits did not include those for Jetstar, or booked overseas.