James Strong never gave reason to seriously question his motives, nor his intent. But I have heard several times an apocryphal story of a comment that he was alleged to have made on a flight deck visit: the story goes that on departure he looked down upon the Qantas complex and offered the rhetorical quiz about how many people worked there. The answer was "about half of them"
I always hoped that story was untrue, because he was the CEO, ffs. If he couldn't fix that, who could?
Anyway, I have never heard of any churlish, or childish, behaviour from him. He approached people from a position of mutual respect, and he won the loyalty of almost everyone at QF in his day.
Back in the day he used to be a fixture at the Phillip Island Moto GP races, riding there with his wife on their own bikes. I silently applauded that as evidence that he embraced the idea that sometimes life can (thankfully) be boiled down to mere sensations. I regret not having spent more time in his presence, engaged in passionate discussion.
I expect that his tenure will be marked as the high water mark of Qantas, just before it became infected by the subsequent two generations of looters masquerading as directors and executives.
To the mods: last night I posted a terse comment about exactly whom death should cut down, in the interestes of fairness. Thanks for deleting it.
On edit: fixed artless para.
Last edited by Twin Beech; 3rd Mar 2013 at 22:03.