The Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN) share price is higher after announcing growth plans.
Qantas to hire more staff
The airline announced that it’s going to add over 8,500 high-skilled jobs to its workforce in the coming years as it changes from recovery to growth. Those numbers account for “attrition as well as growth”.
These additional roles are going to be spread around the country, including pilots, engineers, cabin crew and airport staff. There will be 1,600 new pilots and 800 new engineers.
The jobs will be across its businesses in Qantas, Jetstar, QantasLink and Qantas Freight.
Qantas estimates that it will have 32,000 people by 2033, compared with around 23,500 currently.
Management commentary
The Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said:
Aviation is so important to a country like Australia and you need a big skills pipeline to power it. That’s not just about the major airlines but also small regional operators, defence and general aviation. It’s a whole ecosystem that pilots and engineers, in particular, make their way through, and the long-term skills base required means it relies on constant renewal.
From a growth perspective, we opened our pilot academy three years ago and today we’re announcing plans for an engineering academy, which will produce up to 300 trained people a year that will meet Qantas’ needs as well as Australia’s broader aviation ecosystem.
In the near term, we’re gearing up to meet the growth in all of the markets we serve. We have more aircraft arriving every month, and that means we need more pilots, engineers, cabin crew and others.
Over the next 18 months, we expect to create more than 2,000 new jobs plus replacing natural attrition, so if you’ve ever wanted to work in aviation or at the national carrier, now’s a great time to join.
Final thoughts on the Qantas share price
The airline continues to recover from the difficulties of the COVID-19 period. Qantas is doing what it needs to do to capture the growth in demand for travel services.
As long as there are no major surprises, I think Qantas can deliver outperformance from here if it keeps returning profit to investors in the form of share buybacks and dividends.
