Alan Joyce

CEO of Qantas

Joyce became CEO of Qantas on 28 November 2008. He succeeded Geoff Dixon, who had been in the role since March 2001.

2010–2011 Senate inquiry on airline safety

In 2010 the Australian Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee began an inquiry into pilot training and airline safety. Joyce was called to testify regarding a 2007 incident that had occurred when he was CEO of Jetstar.

On 25 February 2011, at his first hearing at the Senate inquiry, Joyce insisted safety was aligned in the Qantas Group. He closed his opening statement with "Let me make this clear: at Jetstar there is no compromise on safety. The budget airline model does not require it, and we would never accept it. Qantas and Jetstar have different brands, but are completely aligned on safety. We would never compromise that."

On 24 June 2011, The Sydney Morning Herald reported, "Qantas and Jetstar intend to press ahead with their plans to fast-track relatively inexperienced co-pilots into airliner cockpits, despite a parliamentary inquiry yesterday finding against the practice", while also noting that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority had argued that "there is no evidence to suggest that [the cadet training schemes] approach has resulted in any diminution of safety standards".

Losses, restructuring and recovery, 2012–2019

In June 2012 Joyce began a one-year term as chairman of the board of governors of the International Air Transport Association, succeeding KLM's Peter Hartman. An alliance with Emirates, announced in 2012 and authorised by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in March 2013, replaced Singapore with Dubai as the hub for Qantas services to Europe. In granting authorisation the ACCC said it did not accept Joyce's argument that Qantas International faced "terminal decline" without the alliance.

Standard & Poor's downgraded Qantas debt to sub-investment grade in December 2013, and Moody's followed in January 2014. On 27 February 2014, reporting a half-year statutory loss of $235 million, Joyce announced a transformation program intended to cut 5,000 full-time-equivalent jobs and $2 billion of costs by 2016–17, together with the deferral or sale of 50 aircraft. For the 2013–14 financial year Qantas reported a statutory loss of $2.84 billion, the largest in its history, driven by a $2.6 billion non-cash write-down of its international fleet; the underlying loss before tax was $646 million. Joyce rejected calls to resign, saying: "There is no doubt today's numbers are confronting, but they represent the year that is past."

Qantas returned to profit in the following years. For 2015–16 it reported an underlying profit before tax of $1.53 billion and a statutory profit after tax of $1.03 billion, which Joyce described as "the best result in the 95-year history of Qantas", and paid its first dividend since 2009. In March 2018 Qantas began the first regular non-stop passenger service between Australia and Europe, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner flight from Perth to London Heathrow. Joyce was appointed chairman of the Oneworld alliance governing board in September 2018 for a two-year term. He also initiated Project Sunrise, a program to develop non-stop services from Australia's east coast to London and New York; a Dreamliner research flight from New York to Sydney in October 2019 was the longest commercial passenger flight then flown, and Qantas ordered Airbus A350-1000 aircraft for the routes in May 2022.

COVID-19 pandemic

In May 2019, Joyce committed to three more years as the chief executive of Qantas. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Joyce gave up his salary for the rest of the financial year. In June 2020 he announced a three-year recovery plan involving at least 6,000 redundancies, the continued stand-down of about 15,000 employees, the grounding of about 100 aircraft and a $1.9 billion equity raising.

Qantas received about $2.7 billion in Australian government support during the pandemic. Data published by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in December 2021 showed that Qantas received $856 million under the JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme, more than any other listed Australian company. Asked on the ABC program 7.30 in August 2023 whether Qantas should repay the assistance, Joyce said: "I would say what money did the government give that's money that should be paid back?", arguing that aircraft charter payments were for services rendered and that JobKeeper had gone to employees. Treasurer Jim Chalmers confirmed that the airline was under no obligation to repay the support. From 2022 Joyce said publicly that Qantas had come close to collapse in March 2020, telling an American Chamber of Commerce event in Sydney in October 2022 that "we were staring into 11 weeks of survival".

Service disruption and consumer regulation, 2022–2023

As international and domestic travel resumed in 2022, Qantas experienced sustained operational difficulties, including high rates of delay and cancellation and large numbers of mishandled bags. In April 2022 Joyce attributed some airport queuing to travellers who were "not match fit" after long periods without flying, a remark that was widely criticised. In August 2022 he issued a public apology, telling customers that "when it comes to what you expect from Qantas, it's not good enough", and announced $50 flight vouchers and status extensions for frequent flyers.

On 24 August 2023 Qantas reported a record underlying profit before tax of $2.5 billion, a statutory profit of $1.7 billion and a $500 million share buy-back. The result was accompanied by continued criticism over airfares, service standards and the treatment of COVID-19 flight credits.

On 31 August 2023 Qantas removed the expiry date on $570 million of outstanding COVID-19 flight credits, Joyce saying that "people lost faith in the process"; hours earlier the ACCC had begun Federal Court proceedings alleging that Qantas had engaged in misleading conduct by advertising and selling tickets for flights it had already decided to cancel, and by delaying notification to existing ticket holders. Qantas admitted the conduct in May 2024, and on 8 October 2024 the Federal Court imposed a $100 million penalty; the airline also agreed to pay about $20 million to affected customers. The admitted conduct concerned more than 82,000 flights scheduled to depart between May 2022 and May 2024 and affected about 880,000 passengers.

Several media articles, notably from journalist Joe Aston in the Australian Financial Review, were critical of Joyce's handling of these revelations and transparency from the airline.

Qatar Airways decision and Senate inquiry

In July 2023 the Australian government refused an application by Qatar Airways for 21 additional weekly services to Australia's major airports. Qantas had written to the government opposing the application. Two former ACCC chairs, Allan Fels and Rod Sims, publicly criticised the decision, with Fels saying it protected Qantas from competition and kept airfares higher than they would otherwise have been.

A Senate select committee was established to examine the decision. Joyce did not appear before it; the committee reported in October 2023 that Qantas's answers to questions on notice had been unsatisfactory and recommended that it be reappointed so that it could take evidence from him and from the airline's government affairs staff. The Senate did not extend the inquiry. Evidence given to the committee about Qantas's contacts with ministers was contested: Virgin Australia chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka told the committee that the transport minister had said Joyce was unhappy about departmental advice favouring negotiations with Qatar, while Qantas's evidence was that Joyce had never raised the air services agreement with the minister or the prime minister.

Remuneration

Guardian Australia reported Joyce's total pay package had doubled to $24.6 million for the 2016–17 financial year, nearly twice as much as the $12.96 million he received in the previous 12 months. Long-term incentive awards covering the pandemic financial years were deferred at Joyce's request rather than cancelled; about 1.4 million of the resulting shares, worth roughly $10 million, were issued to him in the week before he left the airline. ABC News estimated his total earnings over his time at Qantas at about $125 million and his final-year package at about $22 million.

On 1 June 2023 Joyce sold about 2.5 million Qantas shares, more than 90 per cent of his holding, for about $17 million. The sale had the written approval of the chairman and was made outside a trading blackout, but its timing was criticised after it emerged that Qantas had provided cancellation data to the ACCC three days earlier. Qantas said that earlier ACCC investigations involving compulsory information notices had not resulted in adverse findings and that it had not been aware of the legal action before the regulator announced it. Joyce later said that, given his time again, he would have waited before selling.

At the Qantas annual general meeting on 3 November 2023, about 83 per cent of votes were cast against the remuneration report — a "first strike" under Australian law and one of the largest such votes recorded against an Australian listed company. On 8 August 2024, following an independent governance review commissioned by the board, Qantas announced that $9.26 million would be withheld from Joyce's final remuneration: $8.36 million in long-term incentive shares that did not vest and $900,000 from his short-term bonus, leaving him with about $14 million for the 2022–23 year. The review found that a "command and control" leadership style had discouraged internal challenge and that the company had prioritised financial performance over customers and non-financial risk. Chairman John Mullen said: "It's clear that we let Australians down."

Departure

In May 2023, Joyce announced that he would step aside as Qantas CEO in November, being replaced by Vanessa Hudson, the group's then Chief Financial Officer (CFO). On 5 September 2023, amid the ACCC proceedings, the Senate inquiry into the Qatar Airways decision and shareholder pressure over his final remuneration, Joyce announced that he would leave immediately rather than in November. In a statement he said: "In the last few weeks, the focus on Qantas and events of the past make it clear to me that the company needs to move ahead with its renewal as a priority." Hudson succeeded him the following day.

Assessments of his tenure at the time of his departure were mixed. Qantas chairman Richard Goyder said Joyce "has always had the best interests of Qantas front and centre". Vas Kolesnikoff of Institutional Shareholder Services told The Guardian that "it's somewhat of a shame that such a strong period of leadership is ending in such disgrace", adding that "it seems unequivocal that the customer brand has taken a big hit under Joyce". Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O'Neil said Joyce had broken the "spirit of Australia". Analysis published by the Australian Financial Review on the day of his departure found that the Qantas share price had risen 143 per cent during his tenure, from $2.37 to $5.75, ahead of the S&P/ASX 200's 94.4 per cent, but that the airline's total return including reinvested dividends of 215.5 per cent had lagged the index's 266.8 per cent. Reports of his departure also noted praise for his stewardship of the airline through the global financial crisis, the pandemic and periods of record oil prices.

Later activities

In January 2024, Joyce resigned as chairman of the board of the Sydney Theatre Company, a position he had held since March 2023, citing the time commitment required by the challenges then facing the company.

Joyce made his first substantial public remarks since leaving Qantas in a speech in Sydney in August 2025, in which he defended the airline's pandemic cost-cutting as "hard and painful decisions", repeated that Qantas had been "just 11 weeks away from running out of cash", and argued for greater investment in sustainable aviation fuel.

Joyce released his memoir titled Alan Joyce: Riding the Jet Stream on 28 July 2026, it was published by Hardie Grant. In interviews accompanying its publication he said "I apologise for the angst that was generated", while maintaining that on the information available in August 2020 the ground handling outsourcing was the only decision that could have been made.

LGBTI advocacy

Joyce has been outspoken in supporting the LGBTI community. Homosexuality was a criminal offence in Ireland for most of his youth, and remained so in Tasmania when he moved to Australia in 1996. He has said that on becoming a chief executive he was reluctant to be labelled "the gay CEO", but accepted the role of a public figure after young LGBTI people told him his visibility had helped them; he also recalled receiving homophobic hate mail during the 2011 industrial dispute.

From 2015 Joyce campaigned publicly for same-sex marriage, telling an Australian Marriage Equality business breakfast that the change was consistent with the Australian idea of "a fair go" and that visible business leadership on the issue mattered to young people. In September 2016 he became the first head of a major Australian company to reject the government's proposed plebiscite, writing in Guardian Australia that it was "expensive and unnecessary" and would expose LGBTI people to damaging public debate. He was among about 20 chief executives who signed a joint letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urging Parliament to legislate. The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, responded that listed companies should "stick to their knitting"; Qantas said it would continue to speak out on marriage equality and other social issues.

On 9 May 2017, Joyce was delivering a speech to a business breakfast event in Perth, when a lemon meringue pie was pushed into his face by Tony Overheu, a Western Australian farmer and Christian. Overheu subsequently apologised for humiliating the CEO, claiming that he pied the business figure due to his personal belief that Joyce had overstepped the line in his gay marriage advocacy and the assailant's response simply reflected community push-back. He was later convicted of common assault, trespass, causing damage to property and giving false details to police. Joyce said the following day that "no attempt at bullying us into suppressing our voice will work" and that the attack had "reinvigorated" him. Later that month the former tennis champion Margaret Court said she would stop flying with Qantas "where possible" because of the airline's promotion of same-sex marriage.

He personally donated $1 million towards the campaign to legalise same-sex marriage in Australia, which facilitated his own marriage in 2019. The donation, disclosed in September 2017, was reported as the largest individual contribution to the "yes" campaign; Qantas's own policy was not to spend shareholders' money on it. He was addressing a rally in Sydney when the postal survey result was announced in November 2017.

Joyce is the patron of the Pinnacle Foundation, an organisation which works with "disadvantaged and marginalised LGBT Australians". For his work, he has been recognised on a global list of LGBT executives. As Qantas CEO, Joyce pledged Qantas would "continue social-justice campaigning".

Ground handling outsourcing and litigation

In November 2020 Qantas outsourced the jobs of about 1,700 ground handling staff at ten Australian airports to third-party providers. The Transport Workers' Union of Australia challenged the decision, and in July 2021 the Federal Court found that the outsourcing contravened section 340(1)(b) of the Fair Work Act 2009 because it had been undertaken partly to prevent employees exercising workplace rights. Qantas's appeals were dismissed by the Full Federal Court in May 2022 and unanimously by the High Court of Australia on 13 September 2023, eight days after Joyce left the airline.

Qantas agreed in December 2024 to pay $120 million in compensation to the affected workers, and on 18 August 2025 the Federal Court imposed a $90 million penalty, the largest ever awarded against an employer under Australian workplace law. Justice Michael Lee said that Qantas had "resisted until it could resist no more", and noted that the absence of direct evidence from Joyce had left him with "a sense of disquiet and uncertainty as to precisely what went on within the upper echelons of Qantas". In his 2026 memoir Joyce maintained that the outsourcing had been decided by Qantas Domestic chief executive Andrew David on commercial grounds and that liability had turned on the reverse onus of proof in the Fair Work Act.