Alan Joyce’s biographer discusses his legacy at Qantas

He was a man for his time. The time he arrived in Qantas was around the arrival of genuine, sustainable, low-cost carriers in Australia. He came with a background of the European experience with Aer Lingus, having lived in that environment for two or three years. He brought to Australia a capability to comprehend what was involved and how disruptive it was. So, in that respect, because we needed someone who understood low-cost operations, he just slotted in at the right time.

[Predecessor] Geoff Dixon was quite visionary in creating the low-cost subsidiaries and Jetstar, but also in creating Alan Joyce as the CEO. He’s been criticised very strongly for “Jetstar-ising” Qantas, but at the same time, Qantas’s costs were way, way above where they needed to be, and it’s been a sort of mission of his to bring it back to the competitive level.

How would you describe Joyce’s leadership style as CEO of Qantas?

There have been many descriptions like abrasive and divisive. But at the same time, those close to him admired the way he worked and his ability to understand things – he was incredibly inquiring and extremely smart. He has a great analytical mind, but also the ability to switch between different meetings, to walk into a meeting and be right across the detail. He’s incredibly hardworking but, at the same time, extremely analytical without being a micromanager.

That’s one of the other things that came through pretty forcefully, that he relied on having good people around him and then making sure that they did their jobs effectively. That was probably the best reflection – he was always able to be mindful to switch himself off from events that were going on externally and focus on the job at hand.

What were some of the defining themes of Joyce’s tenure?

The constant need to watch costs and to cut costs. He was always extremely passionate about the brand, which seems ironic now. Certainly, it wouldn’t be the way that most people would describe him, but probably more so than anybody. He was very, very conscious because he had to be – he arrived virtually the same day as the global financial crisis hit, which disrupted the financial community but also basically undermined quite significantly passenger travel. With his background of low-cost operations and the understanding of the dynamics of full-service carriers versus low-cost carriers, he sprang into action in that respect.

Did he relate to the public effectively? That was probably secondary for him. He doesn’t come across as a charismatic figure. But at the same time, that passion was always there. And particularly in the later days, he did come across with a bit of a tin ear. When it came to coming out of COVID, for example, he suggested that passengers weren’t match fit. That was his analytical mind coming through. And that was very much a factor, that people were slower in the security lines, but it was the wrong thing to say then. You’ve got that contrast, but I don’t think there’s ever been anybody more passionate about the brand and wanting the airline to succeed.

He was also conscious of the legacy that he would leave. He’s a working-class kid from Dublin who did make good. He wanted to be a CEO by the time he was 40. He made that with Jetstar and then led one of the world’s leading airlines through 15 tumultuous years when most CEOs don’t survive even five years. It certainly says that he had the support of his board, and he had the support of some very good minds around him, capable people. He was a good leader in that respect, a very good leader, and had the respect both of his peers internationally and of the board.

What is Joyce’s biggest single achievement as CEO of Qantas?

I think, paradoxically, probably the recovery from COVID. This is when 86 airlines went bankrupt – even with government support. Qantas lost $7 billion during COVID. To come out of that looking reasonably healthy was quite an achievement … that was an incredibly complex period to navigate. And to some extent, this is something that underlines a lot of the problems in the aviation industry generally because what’s happened in the last six to 12 months has been mirrored internationally – it’s not just Australia that’s had these problems.

When you think about it, what happened during 2023 has been you had a system which was set up essentially digitally to respond to customer complaints, to respond to needs to change fares, or to refund fares, which was arguably designed to look after, say, 100 cases a day when suddenly you had 1,000 or 2,000 cases a day.

That was where the crossover between technology and the human voice failed. They rushed to get enough voices back in to deal with these things, but the fares and refund side of the business is incredibly complex – much, much harder than just getting my $100 back. And I think that’s an area where certainly Vanessa Hudson is going to have to focus, and where, to some extent, Alan Joyce was caught up in that failure of digital operations to solve problems.

Would you say that was his greatest failure or misstep during his time?

He did a lot of things right along the way. That’s the key thing to remember. But certainly, the perception of his failure during the post-COVID era has been the real one. There were probably a couple of decisions and a couple of wrong appearances. Putting aside the whole ACCC issue with slots, which is a mess anyway, he could have been much, much more sensible with the whole refunds issue.

His big failure in that respect was just in fronting the market effectively and explaining to the public more effectively that, look, there are all these issues, and we are with you. I think he did get a bit of a defensive position on that, which, when you’re as big as Qantas, comes across as being somewhat arrogant.

Do you believe Joyce was a net positive for Qantas?

There’s probably a real prospect that Qantas would have gone bankrupt in the mid-2010s had it not been for Joyce. That’s not to say that somebody else couldn’t have done that, but I’m not sure that anybody else would have had the vision and the guts to do what he did. They were in the depths of despair back in 2012. They were haemorrhaging money internationally. Domestically, [John] Borghetti had started Virgin up and it looked like it would be a real threat to Qantas. Joyce cut back a lot of staff and did transform that business over a period of three, four years. And that was, I think, the greatest achievement.

In terms of the long-term perception of his role there, that was probably what saved him, bearing in mind that in 2010, Japan Airlines and American Airlines went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, two very close partners of Qantas. So, it’s not impossible that Qantas would have gone bankrupt, which would have raised many issues for the Australian aviation industry. I think that will perhaps be recognised one day, although bad things that don’t happen don’t necessarily get credited to someone for doing things right.

But in 15 years, just being able to be there and maintain an operation that – whatever it’s like in the short term now, whether it does smell not of roses right now – will rebound, will come back, will be our airline again, we’ll love it, as always, and we’ll love the jingles. But I think you’ve got to bear in mind that it was an incredibly difficult period, and he navigated it pretty effectively until just these last few months.