King is the ‘minister for higher airfares’: Flight Centre boss
Transport minister Catherine King is dubbed within the travel industry as the “minister for higher airfares”, Flight Centre chief executive Graham Turner has told investors.
In a sign of the travel industry’s lingering anger about the federal government’s blocking of additional flights from Qantas rival Qatar Airways, Mr Turner went off-script at Wednesday’s annual general meeting.
The decision to deny Qatar’s bid for more flights to Australia was a disgrace, said Flight Centre’s Graham Turner. Oscar Colman
“The government is deliberately trying to keep airfares high. We don’t know why,” he said.
“But I know in the travel industry, Transport Minister King is now known as ‘minister for higher airfares’,” he said, prompting laughs from investors.
The federal government in July blocked Qatar Airways from adding 28 flights a week into Australia, a move which disappointed proponents of greater competition but should help Qantas.
“It was a disgrace,” Mr Turner, speaking to The Australian Financial Review after the meeting, said of the decision.
Government ministers have since given various reasons about why the decision was made. But Mr Turner, co-founder of Brisbane-based Flight Centre, which operates travel agencies globally and handled almost $22 billion in transactions last year, maintained the rationale remained unclear.
Flight Centre, which sustained heavy losses during the coronavirus pandemic, also predicted on Wednesday that underlying pre-tax profits should be between $270 million and $310 million for this financial year. Those numbers will exclude costs of a staff retention plan it enabled during the pandemic.
The $290 million midpoint of that result compares to $106 million a year earlier, and was within analyst
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