iscover
Qantas Group chief executive Alan Joyce confirms the business will make 6,000 jobs redundant – or 20 per cent of its workforce.
‘I can’t die now’: Alan Joyce’s cancer battle
0 comment
In May 2011, Alan Joyce was diagnosed with prostate cancer. In this excerpt from his book Alan Joyce & Qantas: The Trials and Transformation of an Australian Icon, aviation veteran Peter Harbison reveals what the former CEO learned from his brush with ‘the big C’
Few experiences focus the mind like cancer. We all have a vague awareness that we are going to die, but the prospect of death is not usually something that interrupts our daily behaviour. Receiving a diagnosis of ‘the big C’ brings a sudden, shocking reminder of the reality of mortality. Anyone who’s been given that news will have the memory of that moment engraved on their mind for life.
At the age of forty-four, with his corporate agenda filled with professional challenges, cancer simply wasn’t on Alan Joyce’s horizon. So in May 2011, less than three years into one of the most demanding baptisms of fire any airline CEO could have in the wake of the global financial crisis, Joyce felt like he had been hit by a train when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The Qantas board had decided to send the company’s top 100 executives for routine medical check-ups. And they were indeed routine for all except the CEO. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in Australia. For men of Joyce’s age, although he was otherwise found to be in good health, it’s a killer unless caught in time.
This content is available exclusively to Australian Aviation members.
A monthly membership is only $5.99 or save with our annual plans.
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
“I wasn’t planning to have my prostate checked until I turned 50,” said Joyce. “But the doctor asked me about it and I thought I may as well. I was very lucky because testing showed I had an aggressive form of prostate cancer.” If Joyce had waited those extra few years, he’d have had an 80 per cent chance of a painful and speedy death. But with the bad news there was good news too: the malignant tumour was detected early, meaning better treatment options. Joyce quickly underwent a procedure known as a da Vinci robotic-assisted prostatectomy at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, a two- to four-hour procedure in which a guided robotic arm removes the prostate gland with the tumour fully intact. The treatment was successful, and by mid-May Joyce was back at his desk, fully recovered and firing on all cylinders.
Joyce is nothing if not driven. He’d had an almost uninterrupted upward career trajectory – an exception being when he walked away from his position in network planning at Ansett after Air New Zealand took full control, although even that proved timely as he walked across the street to Qantas just before the other two major airlines imploded in 2001. When he was diagnosed with cancer, his overriding concern had been professional. “I thought, ‘I can’t die now, leaving this legacy’,” he says, that priority seemingly greater than any other. Such was the desire of this working-class boy from Dublin to excel.
“My lesson out of that cancer scare,” he reflected, “was being even more passionate about that legacy and that determination to make sure that this is a successful company going forward. I’m very passionate about the Qantas brand and the legacy of leaving this great company in a great position … You realise that you have a limited time on this planet, and that you want to make sure that what you’re contributing is good, and appropriate, and that you’re going to do the right thing while you’re here.”
Alan Joyce & Qantas: The Trials and Transformation of an Australian Icon by Peter Harbison (Penguin Random House) is out now.
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?
Make Australian Aviation a preferred news source on Google.
Click here to add Australian Aviation as a preferred news source.
