Qantas chief executive officer Alan Joyce has explained why airfares have reached sky-high levels this Christmas.
Joyce said the price hike is due to a range of factors, including increasing fuel prices and skyrocketing passenger demand.
“The ACCC [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] does a report each quarter on the aviation industry, and they’re saying that airfares are around 27 per cent higher in October this year than in October in 2019, pre-Covid,” he said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.
“A big driver of the price increase is fuel. We’ve paid $5 billion for fuel this year, which is the biggest fuel bill we’ve ever had.
“Secondly, demand is bigger than supply. It’s at unbelievable levels internationally and domestically because people were locked up for so long and everybody was surprised at how rapidly demand rebounded to be excess of what it was in 2019.