Why Qantas is failing: the wrong man for the job

Those prepared to talk on the record included former adman and investor John Singleton, who felt so strongly about Qantas he joined a consortium - twice - to try to buy out the airline. Singleton blames the problems on the board’s decision to> appoint the wrong man for the job > . “As soon as they gave the job to Joyce instead of Gregg or Borghetti, it was all over,” he says.

(from The Age . Emphasis mine. Read the article, it’s excellent)

This quote sums it up perfectly. The Qantas board had a choice of CEOs. Do they pick the guy who runs Jetstar, the scrappy, low-cost, low-margin, low-service airline, or do they pick the customer-focussed, Chairmans-lounge-inventing, operations guy (who’d been with the company for decades)?

They picked the Jetstar guy.

He immediately started moving the Qantas Group down the path of Jetstar: a race to the bottom. He made one bad decision after another. He took his eye off the main game (Qantas) and focussed too much on Jetstar.

Meanwhile, the high-end brand guy (Borghetti) leaves the big Q - who could blame him, really? - and sets up at Virgin, where he in turn does what he knows best: running a high-end airline.

While Joyce is busily turning Qantas into what Virgin once was, Borghetti is turning Virgin into what Qantas once was. They’re both succeeding.