Rated, you do realise that:
- fuel prices changes affect Qantas's competitors just as much as Qantas
- Qantas and its competitors try to adjust ticket prices and flying patterns to absorb fuel price rises, and to capture additional price sensitive traffic as prices fall, and
- as such, fuel price changes only affect profitability to the extent that Qantas and other airlines are unable to respond to them fully?
I ask, because Qantas International has been more profitable than its competitors (SQ, CX, EK etc) over the past few years, and continues to be the case today. And, Qantas is predicting that it will recover the higher fuel costsby the end of the year. All for that is despite the fact that (as you point out) Qantas has more, older, four-engined planes, that burn more fuel.
From where I sit, that's actually pretty good evidence that Qantas is doing a far better job at managing non-fuel costs and revenue than most of its competitors.