Qantas to hire 8,500 workers over a decade to reverse Covid cuts

Qantas Airways Ltd. plans to hire 8,500 more workers in the next decade, about the same number it cut during the pandemic, underscoring aviation’s growth trajectory less than a year after the crisis.

The additional roles include pilots, cabin crew, and airport staff. With potentially more than 300 new aircraft arriving in the next 10 years, Qantas also plans to open an engineering academy to help maintain the fleet, it said Friday.

The scale of the hiring highlights the rebuilding task confronting airlines as they shore up workforces decimated during Covid-19. A labor crunch led to a surge of flight cancellations when travel restrictions were lifted last year, and the industry still faces a pilot shortage that risks undermining plans for expansion.  

The Qantas group, which includes low-cost airline Jetstar, will hire more than 30,000 front-line workers over the next 10 years. Accounting for attrition, the company will employ around 32,000 people by 2033 compared with around 23,500 currently, it said.

“We’re gearing up to meet the growth in all of the markets we serve,” Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce said. “We order aircraft up to 10 years in advance, so we need to think similarly long-term about the people and skills we need to operate them.”

Qantas has orders and purchases rights for as many as 299 narrow-body and 12 wide-body aircraft for delivery over the next decade.

The airline said it will need around 200 new engineering recruits annually. That number exceeds the current national supply of new aviation engineers each year.