On top of the foregoing, the stated profitability of JQ has always been a joke.
There is a typical airline economic pie chart which shows that typical airlines pay about a third of their overhead in fuel, and about a third in leases, charges, fees, insurance etc. The remaining third of the cost pie is staff.
At one stage QF were claiming that JQ was 20% more profitable per passenger after getting less revenue from each due to discount pricing. The only way that would be true is is the staff all worked for 33% of Qantas pay or if <gasp!> someone was hiding other costs in oher areas of the “group” accounts.
JQ Hong Kong, Viet Nam, Asia and International all are acknowledged money losers.
Regarding Qantas International ASK metrics: Longhaul flies their (big) aircraft around 18 hours a day, each, with only one stop. While a smaller domestic aircraft might do 12 hours. While a 737 is doing a 45 minute turn, the 330 is flying 180,000 ASKs. In fact, a 330 can do 4.3 million or more seat kilometres in a day whereas a 737 would do only just over a million. The tyranny of distance and the math of lots of seats grinding out the miles all day.
The reason that long haul suffers in comparison to shorthaul in revenue per ASK is a simple matter of efficiency and competition. Looking at flights in mid January for a MEL-SYD return shows that the cheapest QF flight costs $0.17/km. The cheapest BNE-NRT on the other hand is $0.11/km. BNE-LAX goes for $0.074/km. And its often much cheaper.
International is a tough business because you almost always have a capable flag carrier as competition on any route. And try running a Qantas group without its international feed. Oh! That's right! We did try that when the geniuses thought that they could be a lounge & code share business. How'd that work out again?
Qantas needs more than just a new fleet.