He has made the same mistake as the unions. $552 million sounds like a lot of money, but in fact it is a tiny profit and represents a razor thin margin (about 1.6%).
I think the success should not be measured by calculating the amount of money they take in versus the final profit. This is where the 1.6% comes from. It should be measured by the company value 3.5bill versus the profit 552 mill.
To put it another way, if you bought a block of land for 35k and it goes up 5k in 12 months, that is a 14% return on investment. What's sad here is that a small investor who put 35k in to Qantas shares 12 months ago saw that investment earn 5k in profit but the Board decided not to share that with the investor. As a double hit they also oversaw a falling share value partially due to their IR policies.
The banking sector in Australia handles trillions of dollars each year. If success was measured by how much of that cashflow they kept, their margin would be less than 1%.