The Australian carrier, Qantas, is now predicting a six month profit from July to December. This profit should fall between $50 million and $150 million as it has seen improvements in operating conditions. A full financial year for 2009 and 2010 was not provided by Qantas. However, investor updates reflect the greater market confidence.

Qantas went on to say in a statement that operating conditions have improved when compared to the second half of the 2008 to 2009 financial year. Passenger volumes and yields are both improving, and thus, increasing the airline’s half year profits. High levels of volatility in the economic outlook, industry, capacity, fuel prices, exchange rates and passenger demand continues.

This very wide forecast comes as Qantas has announced that its November traffic results, which show that it carried some 3.48 million passengers during that month, has seen a 9.7 percent increase when compared to the same month in 2008. Qantas’ international services, however, are still struggling to fill up its cabins. This service only carried about 482,000 passengers for November. This is a 22.6 percent drop when compared to November of 2008.

In contrast to these down international numbers for Qantas, Jetstar carried 335,000 people internationally. This means that Jetstar’s passenger base grew by 129.8 percent.

Right now airlines all over the world are having problems thanks to this huge economic downturn. Although numbers are starting to improve for some, it could be quite some time before a full recovery starts. Now people just have to wait and see which airlines will be able to hold out.