Qantas Group, Virgin Australia reap mega earnings on little aviation competition, strong domestic travel demand: ACCC
Australia's major airlines continue to reap huge earnings as limited competition and strong travel demand has secured strong financial results for the nation's dominating carriers.
This is according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission which delivered its latest report monitoring the nation's domestic airline sector.
The consumer watchdog pointed to Qantas Group's $1.5b in earnings for the first half of 2025 financial year, which includes its budget subsidiary Jetstar.
Qantas Group earned $916m from its domestic operations across both carriers while Jetstar reporting a massive earnings surge of about 54 per cent between the first half of the 2024 and 2025 financial years.
It comes as Jetstar remains the only low-cost carrier in Australia since the collapse of Bonza last year and Tigerair's exit in 2020.
ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey said the lack of competition was a major boon for the budget airline.
'Jetstar has been able to capitalise on the continued absence of competitive pressure from another low-cost carrier in the domestic market to increase its market share and operating margin,' Ms Brakey said in a statement.
The watchdog said the withdrawal of Rex from the major city routes after it went into administration sent more passengers to Virgin Australia, nudging the major carrier's market share up three per cent to 34 per cent.
This comes as Virgin secured three Boeing 737 aircraft leases from Rex.
While Virgin does not publicly report its half-year results, its former CEO Jayne Hrdlicka said the airline achieved record profits in the first half of the 2025 financial year after it was restructured under Bain Capital.
Qantas' profit was boosted by its 80 per cent share of the corporate travel market, playing an important role in Qantas Domestic's $647m in earnings.
"The high half-yearly earnings reported by Qantas Group reflect its dominance of the domestic airline sector, with Qantas and Jetstar accounting for over 60 per cent of passengers," Ms Brakey said.
While passenger demand took a hit during March with the impacts of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred leading to a downturn in Brisbane and Gold Coast flights, passenger numbers surged in April due to the school holidays, Easter and ANZAC Day all falling in a three week period.
'Airservices Australia noted that 17 April 2025 (the Thursday before Good Friday) was the busiest day for domestic travel in the past five years,' the ACCC wrote.
Qantas delivered its first dividend since 2019 earlier this year after revealing its stellar results for the first half of the 2025 financial year.
'Our financial strength means we are now in a position to pay our shareholders dividends for the first time in almost six years,' Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson said.
Alongside the dividend, the airline said it had paid 27,000 non-executive employees $1000 each as a "thank you payment" in December.
Qantas also noted a drop with international airfares of about 6.6 per cent, while domestic flights increased 0.8 per cent.
Jetstar's low fares were a point of pride for the company as about one third of tickets below $100 for the six-month period.
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