Qantas in Trouble
Australian carrier Qantas reported a US$5.5 billion plunge in revenue during the second half of 2020 and said international passenger flights would not resume until October as the pandemic continued to devastate the industry.
The country's biggest airline said it suffered an underlying loss of Aus$1.1 billion (US$858 million) in the six months to December 31, with statutory losses climbing to Aus$1.47 billion.
"These figures are stark, but they won't come as a surprise," said Qantas CEO Alan Joyce.
"A year ago, none of us knew just how big an impact Covid would have on the world, or on aviation. It's clearly worse than anyone expected," he said.
"Border closures meant we lost virtually 100 percent of our international flying and 70 percent of our domestic flying -- three-quarters of our revenue -â€' around Aus$7 billion -â€' went with it."
Joyce noted that the company had already seen revenue fall Aus$4 billion during the first half of 2020, bringing the total impact of the pandemic to Aus$11 billion.
"That is a massive number, probably a bigger number than any other company in Australia is experiencing because of Covid," he told a press conference.
Joyce pushed back the expected resumption of international passenger flights from July to the end of October, but said the cost of keeping those planes on the ground was largely being offset by increased freight operations.
With Australia's successful containment of the pandemic, Qantas flagged a return to 60 percent of pre-Covid domestic capacity by the end of March and 80 percent by the end of June.
Qantas had posted a US$1.9-billion loss for the year ending June 30 as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the global economy.
Joyce said a total of 8,500 staff would lose their jobs due to the crisis, and another 7,500 would remain suspended until the resumption of international flights.
Around 100 planes have also been grounded as part of a Aus$10 billion cost-cutting blitz and restructuring effort that Qantas said would save it Aus$1 billion a year from 2023.
AI is the Neat Handwriting of the Illiterate
A model in the hands of someone who has read the filing and walked the plant is a clerk. The same model, speaking for someone who has done neither, is a disguise. On AI slop, phantom citations and factslop, why finish stopped being evidence of work, and the containment layer KXCO built so a machine cannot speak as the institution until a source is attached.
Worthship: Do Not Conform to the Age
Worthship is the older English word for worship, and it means to ascribe worth. Bishop Robert Barron preached Romans 12 on 30 August. This essay follows the text into the prison letters, and puts two questions to a graph: do the four readings of that Sunday agree, and was Paul free or in chains when he wrote about despair?
The Truth in All Its Ugliness Must Survive
A majority vote does not determine the truth. Consensus is a mood, gossip is a sport, and a model will write the pretty version for free. Why the ugly number has to survive, why a record beats a dashboard, and what KXCO was built to keep standing when the room changes its mind.
Don't Be the Best, Be the Only: Winning in an AI World
AI is repricing competence downward. What it cannot reproduce is a life. The case for remaining non-fungible, why friction still produces the best ideas, and what it means to build AI systems that keep the human intellect in them.
Every story, signed and delivered.
Subscribe to the kxco channel and get the headline, the AI-written key takeaways, and the chain-anchor link the moment we publish. Audio versions and per-ticker subscriptions arrive in the next iteration.