Borghetti didn't mention the Q word
It was the airline whose name they darned not speak. Guests who came to listen to Virgin Australia chief executive Jonh Borghetti at a well-attended lunch in Melbourne organised by the Australian British Chamber of Commerce surely would have expected the guest of honour to at least mention rival Qantas every so often.
But no, Borghetti insisted on calling it "that airline" or "a certain rival" and so on and so forth.
It was all a bit light-hearted and Borghetti did his best not to revel in the industrial dramas Qantas is experiencing.
But in the end he couldn't resist on subtle dig while clarifying that Virgin didn't actually pay its pilots substantially less that Qantas does [my bold BB] (Qantas has more of the bigger planes and, basically pilot who fly those get paid more), as Qantas had claimed.
Lunch host: "Here was I reading Qantas saying your pilots are paid 50 per cent less than Qantas pilots - poor blokes, I want to give them some money." Quick as a flash, Borghetti replied: "Maybe he [Qantas boss Alan Joyce] was comparing CEO salaries at the time." (To be fair, Borghetti's wage was actually 44 per cent less than that of the Qantas boss.)
Borghetti also go some laughs when one questioner asked him why he should buy Virgin shares. "I'm not a stockbroker... so you should discuss that with your financial advisor," said Borghetti. "Oh, they don't know what they're talking about," came the reply. "Do you want me to go to jail? Will you visit me?" said Borghetti, as the crowd roared with laughter.
He got a similar response when asked about Virgin's culture. "When I arrived they called customers 'guests'. I said why, you can't get guests to pay when they come to your house. But it turns out they really want to treat the people who fly with us as guests."
AFR: Rear Window, page 38 Monday 17 October 2011