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Alan Joyce looks set to release his memoir charting his time as chief executive of Qantas.
The Australian Financial Review reported the former executive’s “colourful new agent” confirmed he was talking to book publishers about his “star client” penning a book.
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“There’s a lot of interest from publishers,” representative Robert Joske said.
The upcoming autobiography would be the third book on Joyce’s career, following unauthorised accounts from aviation veteran Peter Harbison and Financial Review columnist Joe Aston.
Both authors appeared on the Australian Aviation Podcast, which you can listen to below.
Aston’s The Chairman’s Lounge – published by Simon & Schuster – followed a “year-long campaign of investigative commentary on Qantas”, which the publisher claimed led to the resignations of Joyce and chairman Richard Goyder.
“Joe’s incredible ability to not only break a story but to write about it evocatively made his column essential reading for anyone after the truth about how power, money and influence flow in this country,” Simon & Schuster said.
“The Chairman’s Lounge will do the same over the long form, telling the bigger story of how one company – and a few key individuals – bought the nation’s loyalty and then cashed in on it.
“With fresh interviews and revelations, The Chairman’s Lounge is the definitive, compelling story of greed, power and hubris brought low – of how Qantas was brought to ground and who did it.”
Harbison’s Alan Joyce and Qantas: The Trials and Transformation of an Australian Icon charted Joyce’s rise and fall from his early days at Qantas through his leadership of Jetstar to his tenure as CEO.
Speaking to Australian Aviation last year, Harbison said there was a “real prospect” that Joyce had saved Qantas from bankruptcy in the mid-2010s.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
Qantas’ reputation suffered over the last few years of the Joyce era, sliding from Australia’s strongest brand in 2019 to 41st place last year, according to a study by consultancy firm Brand Finance.
