Captain Sherm, I suggest you should stick to flying aircraft.
For a start, there are probably no more than Fifty Australian analysts outside of those working at Qantas and
VB who would be capable of performing the required forensic accounting analysis of an airline, and at one time I was one of them. None work for ASIC or ACCC, which is why there has been no inquiry, let alone prosecutions, for the disgraceful price fixing, gouging and anti competitive behaviour in the aviation marketplace for at least Thirty years. Furthermore, since the Qantas group is the major potential employer of anyone with aviation accounting experience, none of them are going to risk their future employment opportunities by participating in any meaningful analysis of Qantas.
Your assertion that anything useful in an accounting sense can be derived from QF's published accounts is nonsense. It is the equivalent of stating that I could learn to pilot a B737 by learning the AIP's by heart. The real information that is used to run an airline and that would reveal the true state of QF and Jetstar are the
management accounts, not the statutary accounts. Furthermore, even within the management accounts,
it is possible to produce any "profit" you like in virtually any location.
The reason profit is so malleable, and why Capt. Kremin has a point, is a little matter called
cost allocation of indirect costs. This has been described as "The metaphysics of accounting", accountants argue over cost allocation like medieval philosophers arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Subsidies to Jetstar can be easily and secretly incorporated in the "rates" Jetstar pays for various Qantas services, and I defy anyone without detailed technical and operational as well as accounting knowledge to disentangle the fixed and variable, direct and indirect components of each and every cost. I've personally been the meat in the sandwich between a very irate General manager of a subsidiary airline and the Board after he convinced himself that mainline was price gouging and thereby minimising his "profit", I've personally played all these games myself.
To put it another way, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that Jetstar is profitable if it was operating at arms length from Qantas, and had to endure the same capital raising, regulatory and start up costs associated with such a regime. All Jetstar is is an exercise in marginal costing aimed at frustrating Virgin Blue without cannibalising Qantas market share, but no one is ever going to be able to prove it. If you want a more detailed technical explanation of how aircraft costs are allocated by cycles, block hours, engine hours, landings ,etc. we can open a new thread.
To produce a real picture of Jetstars relationship with the rest of the Qantas group requires
contribution analysis which is a calculation of direct revenue earned (not simply ticket sales) minus direct operating costs (salaries, wages, fuel, line maintenance)
before fixed and indirect costs are subtracted. I would wager that Jetstars contribution is piddling next to mainline, but that its overhead allocation is even tinier leaving a notional "profit". I would expect that not even the Board would be given that information so they can maintain "plausible deniability".
"What about the Auditors?" You ask? Don't make me laugh! I'll bet QF do exactly as I used to - listen to them , tell them what they want to hear, then shove em in an aircraft cockpit for a few minutes and then take them to lunch.
P.S. The best name I've ever heard for a marginal costing operation like Jetstar is "Pissing in the soup."