Australian airline Qantas Airways Ltd yesterday named company veteran Vanessa Hudson as its first female CEO, replacing the cost-cutting Irish-Australian Alan Joyce.
Qantas, which returned to profit late last year after taking large losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Hudson would become CEO and managing director when Joyce retires in November after 15 years in the top job.
Hudson, who has been in Qantas’ executive ranks for nearly three decades, would remain in her role as chief financial officer until then, the airline group said.
Photo:AP
“I have worked for Qantas for 28 years and that excitement of the first day that I felt walking into Qantas, I feel still today,” Hudson told a news conference.
“We are in an incredibly strong position. We have got many things in the pipeline. That is not to say the past three years have not been challenging — they have,” she said.
“There will be many challenges, I am sure, ahead,” she said, adding that taking care of customers was “absolutely at the center of everything.”
Joyce, who had been expected to leave Qantas at some point this year, praised his successor as an “outstanding executive.”
“There are not many female CEOs of the worldwide aviation industry,” he told the news conference.
“And it’s a credit to this country that a gay Irish man was appointed 15 years ago to be CEO of the company, and now we have the first female.”
Joyce said he had extended his time as CEO at the board’s request to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If it had not been for COVID I would have retired a few years ago,” he said.
Qantas posted a profit of A$1.43 billion (US$958.3 million) before tax in the second half of last year, after accumulating A$7 billion in losses across the previous three years, weighed down by the pandemic.
However, under Joyce Qantas was heavily criticized by union leaders for sacking or standing down thousands of staff to keep a lid on costs at the height of the outbreak.
“After 15 years of Qantas downfall under Alan Joyce’s management, a new CEO has the opportunity to serve the hard-working people who built the spirit of Australia,” the Transport Workers’ Union said in a statement. “Current and illegally sacked workers deserve courageous management to take Qantas in a new direction.”
Qantas has aid that the restructuring, which saved the airline almost A$1 billion, was crucial to the company’s financial post-lockdown rebound.
Hudson said she looked forward to meeting with the unions and “developing a constructive relationship.”
Qantas had been upfront in recognizing the “customer experience was not where we wanted it” during the pandemic, she said.
However, the airline invested heavily in improving its performance “and it is back where we were pre-COVID,” she said.
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