Trinity maths graduate flying high as new chief at Qantas
More than a decade after turning down a Ryanair job to move Down Under, Dubliner Alan Joyce was yesterday appointed chief executive at Australian airline giant Qantas.
The Tallaght-born maths graduate is expected to earn up to four times as much as Ryanair's Michael O'Leary, making him one of the best-paid aviation executives in the world.
"Any Aussie would be delighted to secure the position but as an Irishman I'm very proud," said Mr Joyce, who'll become Qantas's first non-Australian chief executive when he takes the reins in November.
The 42-year-old is expected to make as much as $7m AUD (€4.2m) a year, based on the outgoing chief executive's 2007 package, well above the €1m package Mr O'Leary scooped last year.
Since getting the nod from the Qantas board last week, Mr Joyce has been celebrating with his brother and wife who are in Australia for the occasion, while there have also been celebratory phone calls with parents Collete and Maurice back home in Tallaght.
"It's just wonderful," Maurice told the Irish Independent last night. "He seems to have a great forte for aviation, and we're very proud of him."
His wife Collete said Alan "hadn't changed a bit" since leaving Ireland for the jet-set life in Australia, and still "definitely" has his Irish accent.
"We were over there a few weeks ago, and he had us in Bali and the Gold Coast and Hong Kong," said Maurice.
"He's very good to us, he looks after his parents."
A maths and engineering graduate from Trinity College Dublin, Mr Joyce has frequently credited his parents for making sacrifices to put their four children through college. After university,
the maths enthusiast started out at Aer Lingus, where he worked as a research analyst having been knocked back for a pilot's position.
He then moved to Australia in the mid-1990s after turning down a job at a rapidly expanding Ryanair in favour of working for Australia's Ansett, which went to the wall in September 2001. Luckily, Mr Joyce got out in 2000, swapping Ansett for Qantas, where he went on to head up the airline's low-cost division Jetstar with two former Ryanair executives.
He has built up a profile as one of Australia's more affable chief executives, shunning the trappings of a more executive lifestyle in favour of a down-to-earth approach and a newfound passion for Aussie Rules.
In recent years, he had been repeatedly mooted as a candidate to take over from outgoing Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon, and is also believed to have been offered the top job at Aer Lingus in 2005 following Willie Walsh's defection to British Airways.
At Qantas, Mr Joyce will head up a company boasting revenues of $15bn AUD (€9.1bn) last year, and profits of over $1bn AUD (€608m). Like most of the global aviation industry, Qantas has been battered by soaring oil prices coupled with weakening economic conditions, and earlier this month the Australian airline announced plans to axe 1,500 jobs and scrap planes to hire 1,200 workers .
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