Qantas Airways Ltd

Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd. has received a buyout offer from investment firms Macquarie Bank and Texas Pacific Group that could be worth more than $7.8 billion. The bid sent shares surging 25%. "The approach is confidential and incomplete and is being investigated by Qantas," the airline said in a statement, after a newspaper reported that a Macquarie-led buyout possibly worth $8 billion was in the works. A deal, which could rival US Airways Group Inc.'

Qantas Airways, Australia's largest airline, will cut 1,500 jobs worldwide to cope with an almost doubling of fuel prices in the last year. The carrier will trim about 4% of its workforce and canceled plans to hire 1,200 workers, it said today. It also will ground as many as 22 aircraft. Qantas follows AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, Delta Air Lines Inc. and SAS Group's Scandinavian Airlines in eliminating workers as record fuel prices erode earnings. Industrywide losses may total more than $6.

A rupture in the side of a Qantas Airways 747 jumbo jet Friday alarmed air travelers worldwide as investigators launched a probe into how it happened and what was to blame. Qantas passengers were dispatched on other planes to their destinations as the damaged aircraft was being inspected in Manila by Australian and U.S. accident investigators, including a team from Boeing Co., the Chicago-based manufacturer of the aircraft. The incident may seem far away and only distantly important to some.

Australian investigators are exploring the possibility that an oxygen cylinder could have exploded mid-flight on the Qantas jumbo jet that made a harrowing emergency landing in the Philippines with a large hole in its fuselage. The Boeing 747-400 was cruising at 29,000 feet Friday with 346 passengers aboard when it was shaken by what passengers described as an explosion. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling as the plane descended rapidly and debris flew through the cabin from a hole that appeared in the floor.

A packed Qantas jetliner lost the use of crucial flight instruments last week after an oxygen cylinder exploded and blasted a large hole in the fuselage, an air safety investigator said Wednesday. The explosion Friday during a flight from London to Melbourne forced the pilots of the Boeing 747-400 to rapidly descend thousands of feet and make an emergency landing in the Philippines.

British Airways and Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd. said Tuesday that they were holding talks about a potential merger, sparking hopes of consolidation in the hard-hit aviation industry. Both companies issued statements saying they were exploring a potential merger with each other "via a dual-listed company structure." Neither British Airways nor Qantas provided further details.

Qantas Airways has fired a flight attendant who gave a detailed account to a newspaper of a midair tryst with actor Ralph Fiennes in an airliner toilet cubicle. The airline had earlier suspended Lisa Robertson pending an investigation into reports she had sex with Fiennes during a flight from the northern Australia city of Darwin to Mumbai, India, on Jan. 24. Qantas said in a statement Monday that Robertson's employment contract had been terminated. It didn't give a reason.

Qantas Airways, Australia's largest airline, became the third foreign airline this year to admit to price-fixing. It agreed to pay a $61-million fine to the U.S. government and to cooperate with the Justice Department's continuing investigation. Qantas sought to eliminate competition by fixing the rates for shipments of cargo to and from the U.S. from at least January 2000 through February 2006, according to charges filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

More private equity firms expressed interest in joining a bid for Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd. on Thursday, the day after plans for an audacious takeover were confirmed. But political and legal hurdles facing the massive buyout -- priced by analysts at as much as 11 billion Australian dollars, ($8.5 billion) -- also emerged, as the government promised that no changes would be made to laws barring the airline's sale into foreign control.

Qantas Airways Ltd. has agreed to a sweetened $8.7-billion buyout offer led by Macquarie Bank Ltd. and private equity firm Texas Pacific Group, sources said today. The offer of 5.60 Australian dollars a share, 10% above Qantas' last trade, was unanimously endorsed by the Qantas board after the bidders dropped their demand for a breakup fee, sources close to the transaction said. The board had rejected an offer of 5.50 Australian dollars on Wednesday.