Everyone is piling in now.
OPINIONOpinion: ‘Good riddance to Alan Joyce’ as Qantas chief executive officer
Qantas boss Alan Joyce has stepped down from the job but not before turning the once beloved national institution into a “hated” airline, says Caleb Bond.
Caleb Bond3 min read
September 6, 2023 - 6:53AM
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Qantas CEO Alan Joyce announces immediate retirement
Alan Joyce will retire as Qantas Group CEO two months early, with chief financial officer Vanessa Hudson taking over the role.
Goodbye, Alan Joyce – don’t let the Chairman’s Lounge door hit you on the way out.
Have you ever seen anyone so quickly turn a beloved national institution into a viscerally hated, burning dumpster fire?
Your readership numbers – much like the record-setting profit numbers Mr Joyce recently squizzed on the Qantas balance sheet – don’t lie.
Stories about Qantas and the near-daily revelations of new woes have been doing the business. My email inbox was clogged with viewer correspondence after talking about Qantas on Sky News last week.
Australians are angry. They’re angry because their airline – the national carrier, the flying kangaroo, the spirit of Australia – has gone down the toilet.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has announced he will retire from the airline two months earlier than planned. Picture: Getty ImagesQantas may be owned, in law, by its shareholders. But in reality it is owned by Australians.
Mr Joyce severely underestimated that the airline’s success existed largely through goodwill and sentimentality. He managed to blow that up overnight by taking advantage of it.
He was in 2017 made a Companion of the Order of Australia – the country’s highest civil award – for, among other things, “eminent service to the aviation transport industry”.
Eminent service to its degradation, more like.
First it was successfully lobbying the federal government to
deny Qatar Airways a few more flights into the country, supposedly in the “national interest”.
Joyce's Qantas highs & lows
1996After studying physics, maths and management in Dublin, Ireland, Alan Joyce moves to Australia.
Then we learnt Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s son had, for some reason, been
gifted a membership to the Chairman’s Lounge.
Next it was a record profit of $2.5 billion after tax while flyers faced worse service and higher airfares.
Never fear, though. Mr Joyce
told a Senate inquiry last week that airfares were declining – not that anyone has seen any evidence.
Along came allegations of slot hoarding, whereby Qantas would cancel flights it never intended to run so other airlines couldn’t use airport gates.
Australians have grown frustrated by our national carrier. Picture: NCA NewswireWe found out it was holding on to hundreds of millions of dollars of unclaimed flight credits that were set to expire. On that they were forced to sheepishly back down.
And the final nail in the coffin was allegations from the ACCC that Qantas was not only cancelling flights to shut-out other airlines but continuing to sell seats on those flights, thereby ensuring they had your money tied up in those ill-fated flight credits.
All of this happened in barely a month, Mr Joyce squirming in front of the senate committee and destroying both his and his employer’s reputation by the minute.
He didn’t want to face the music elsewhere. I invited him to be interviewed on Sky News last Wednesday – the same day former treasurer Peter Costello said Qantas was one of the most powerful players in Canberra – and he refused.
Now the Qantas board belatedly does what it had little choice of avoiding by
bringing forward his retirement by two months with just one day’s notice.
Mr Joyce said leaving early was “the best thing I can do under these circumstances”.
Under the circumstances, perhaps. But I dare suggest he would have been better off protecting the reputation of Qantas by not ripping off the country.
Alan Joyce’s exit come as Qantas is embroiled in controversy.And he leaves with an extra $24 million in hand, anyway, so what does he care?
Mr Joyce’s arrogance has done irreparable damage. Australians don’t like arrogance and we particularly don’t like it from those we hold dear – like Qantas.
But as sordid and disappointing as all this has been, it has proven one thing to be true – that the power of the consumer can ultimately trump all.
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Brutal reaction to Joyce’s early exit
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce to resign tomorrowMr Joyce thought he had one up on his passengers. He didn’t. Even if he leaves with tens of millions in bonuses, he has had his derrière served to him on a platter by the Australian people.
Don’t expect that anger to dissipate. If Qantas wants to recover from this, it must prove why.
Qantas lived and died on loyalty. When that loyalty wasn’t returned, Australians showed Mr Joyce who was really in charge.