Dubliner appointed Qantas chief at challenging juncture

AUSTRALIA’s state airline Qantas has appointed 42-year-old Dubliner, Alan Joyce as its chief executive.

Mr Joyce, who worked for Aer Lingus for eight years prior to moving to Australia in the early part of this decade, currently heads up Qantas’s low fares subsidiary, Jetstar.

He has been with the Qantas group, in various roles, since 2000 and has been chief executive of Jetstar since its establishment in 2003.

He was named chief executive designate yesterday and will formally take over from outgoing chief Geoff Dixon at the company’s annual general meeting at the end of November.

Mr Joyce, who was educated at Trinity College Dublin and has dual Irish-Australian citizenship also worked for a time at the now defunct Australian airline, Ansett.

In announcing his appointment, Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford said that Mr Joyce was “an outstanding executive, with wide experience in all facets of the airline industry”.

The Australian airline is going through turbulent times.

Beyond last week’s incident when one of its 747s en route from Hong Kong to Melbourne had to make an emergency landing in the Philippines after a hole appeared in its fuselage and the negative PR that came with it, the airline recently announced it would be cutting around 1,500 jobs from its global workforce due to the current high cost of fuel.

“Qantas has successfully adapted and responded to the myriad challenges the industry has faced since 2001 and is duly recognised as one of the best managed airlines in the world,” said Mr Clifford.