It now seems that Qantas Airways will be cutting its first class seats from all but a few of its routes. This news comes following a 72 percent slump in profits. The Australian flag carrier blames these bad figures on falling customer demand. The carrier said it was also scrapping dividend payments.

Alan Joyce, the chief executive of Qantas Airways, said that Maintaining a first class offering on flagship routes is essential for Qantas as a premium airline. It is vital that they align this offering with demand, which is expected to be relatively slow compared to business, premium economy and economy.

As of now, first class seats will be kept on flights from Australia to London via Singapore. Also, it will be kept on routes between Australia and Los Angeles after demand fell dramatically due to the downturn. He did note that the first class product will remain on these key routes. This is all simply a re-balance, as there are more business class seats and less first class seats.

This reconfiguration is driven by the longer term trend of what he believes is happening to demand. The long term trend is that first class has been on a decline. Seat factor in first class has been below 40 percent. Thus, they have plenty of room to cope with all expected future demand.

Thus, Qantas will reconfigure 29 planes and upgrade in-flight entertainment at a cost of $400 million. This will leave first class on just 12 Airbus A380s. These cuts come in the same week as new data from the International Air Travel Association painted a very gloomy picture for the sector.