Qantas CEO designate Alan Joyce made his international press debut at last week's roll-out in Toulouse of its first Airbus A380. Our man there Niall O'Keefe, the European editor of Flight, spent some time with Alan. As fellow Dubliners they got on like a house on fire.
On one of the major topics of the day, Joyce says he expects Qantas to be an active player in airline industry consolidation. The airline would make an "attractive partner", he says, and hence it would have flexibility in its merger position.
It has favourable fuel hedges in place and has ridden the wave of the commodities boom (resource companies make up a sizeable chunk of its corporate accounts). Joyce notes that the airlines hardest hit by the global slowdown are those based at financial centres, such as Hong Kong - the Australian economy, by contrast, remains strong. However, he recognises his airline's weaknesses an "end-of-line carrier" with a domestic market of 21 million.
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