Australian Airline Qantas Airways Names John Mullen As Chairman

SYDNEY, Feb 22 (Bernama-dpa) -- Australian airline Qantas Airways on Wednesday announced the appointment of John Mullen as its chairman. He will assume the role ahead of the company's annual general meeting this October, reported dpa news.

Nora Scheinkestel will join the board as a non-executive director and chair of the Remuneration Committee.

The new appointments were made after the retirement of the current Chairman Richard Goyder and two directors Maxine Brenner and Jacqueline Hey.

On Tuesday, Qantas shares closed at US$18.72, down 3.06 per cent.  

It also reported that its statuary profit after tax for the six months ending on December 31 dropped by 13 per cent to $869 million Australian (US$570 million).

The Qantas Group announced several major investments, including an accelerated rollout of Wi-Fi on international flights and a major upgrade to digital platforms.

Qantas Group confirmed eight additional Airbus A321XLRs for Qantas Domestic from its existing order book announced as part of the carrier's domestic fleet renewal programme. This brings the number of Qantas A321XLRs on order to a total of 28, with the first due to arrive in early 2025.

In the first half of the calendar year, the carrier's low-cost arm Jetstar will increase its domestic flying by around 240,000 seats and its international flying by around 200,000 seats (compared with the six months before that) to popular destinations such as Bali, South Korea, Japan as well as Cairns and Sunshine Coast domestically.

The carrier sees strong travel demand across the portfolio. Unit revenue is expected to remain stable for domestic and continue to normalise for international as market capacity returns.

-- BERNAMA-dpa