Qantas Boss Alan Joyce: Love Him Or Loathe Him
Is Alan Joyce, the current Qantas CEO, actually valued at $363 million?
On Tuesday, Qantas lost almost 3% in market value due to the announcement of its CEO's departure and his successor. Vanessa Hudson, Qantas's current CFO, will become the fourth CEO since the government privatized the airline in 1995.
Alan Joyce is stepping down from his position as Qantas CEO. He has worked as the airline's leader for 15 years. Rhett Wyman took the photo of Joyce.
The ones who have bought parts of the airline and own it are sad he is leaving. People who fly on the airline are not. Joyce did different things in his 15 years. This made two groups of people feel differently about him.
Qantas' boss is loved by investors and other industry leaders. He's really good at saving money and changing things up. Everyone thinks he's one of the best airline CEOs in the world. The company's shares have gone up a lot since he started. The old boss thinks he's done a great job.
When Joyce was in charge of Qantas, he fought against the unions and staff by outsourcing jobs and pushing back against pay claims. One big event was when he grounded all Qantas flights in 2011 due to a dispute with workers. This left lots of people stuck and made the news all over the world. This caused damage to the Qantas brand and might be the first time people started to think differently about Joyce and his leadership.
Back in 2011, Alan Joyce caused a big uproar. He grounded the entire Qantas fleet. There was a disagreement going on. Many people were left stranded. Angela Wylie took a photo of this.
Three years ago in 2008, Qantas' board chose Joyce to be the next CEO. He promised in an interview that customer service would not decrease at Qantas. Joyce acknowledged there are areas where they could be more efficient, but service levels would remain the same.
He may have been hopeful, but the shareholder came first during the 2011 fleet grounding. The customer was not the priority. However, a business's main goal is to gain and maintain customers.
Qantas had it easy because they were the main airline in Australia. They had more power than their customers. They could do whatever they wanted. However, the pandemic changed everything.
Back in 2013, Joyce made an agreement with Emirates. They are from the Middle East and belong to the government. They can distribute prices and schedules. Recently, they received a temporary extension for this deal. Joyce talked highly about the partnership. He said they can't fly everywhere, but they can go to most places together. They also treat each other's customers as their own.
Virgin Australia started a fight with Qantas over prices.
Qantas' bosses have talked about the competition they face from foreign government-owned airlines. These airlines have a lot of money from taxes. They've talked about this to shareholders and the government.
Qantas faced a challenge during a price war with Virgin Australia. Domestic airfares dropped, pleasing customers but hurting Qantas shareholders. The challenge was often talked about by Qantas and Joyce.
Qantas was not pleased because Virgin had support from shareholders, including foreign government-owned airlines like Etihad and Singapore Airlines who had plenty of money when the pandemic began. However, Virgin Australia went into administration and none of those state-owned airlines provided financial assistance.
Qantas got over $2 billion from Australian taxpayers during the pandemic. Joyce made sure Qantas was healthier than most other airlines. To survive, Qantas cut staff and grounded planes since customers stayed home and the borders were closed.
People who fly with Qantas are not happy with how their customer service has been lately. They wanted to get rid of the CEO, Alan Joyce, last year. Peter Rae took a picture of the situation.
Joyce is really good at handling himself in Canberra. His ability to talk to politicians of different political parties is praised by his business peers.
All airlines are getting criticism for bad service as they recover. Qantas is getting it the worst in Australia. They lose bags, cancel flights, make people wait on the phone, and delay refunds.
Joyce had trouble dealing with customer complaints and improving service. Qantas is now even more dominant in the Australian market after the pandemic. Despite complaints and promises not to fly with Qantas again, customers still do.
Joyce was too slow to answer and his apologies were not enough. People kept asking him to leave. Joyce promised to improve customer experience but also planned to buy back $500 million shares for shareholders. It made people think that Joyce only cares about shareholders, not customers.
Joyce announced on Tuesday that it's a good time to leave. The board requested he stay in 2020 to help with the COVID-19 recovery plan. In 2019, he said he'll stay as long as the board and shareholders want him and if he still enjoys the job. He did not mention the customers.
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