KEY POINTS:
Jetstar chief Bruce Buchanan will put on an orange jacket and star jump for the cameras if he has to but clowning around doesn't come naturally.
He leaves that to Richard Branson types and the distinctive face of the airline's marketing campaign, Dave "Hughesy" Hughes of Rove show
fame.
"With a Virgin group you have a larrikin and that's what the brand represents. We're not the Robin Hood out there - we're the guy trying to deliver the best value possible."
He's head of a chirpy airline but Buchanan is a deadly serious bloke. The 36-year-old will head Jetstar's operations in New Zealand which from June will be expanded to take over most of the routes now flown by Qantas, putting on almost 10,000 seats extra into the New Zealand domestic market.
In keeping with the airline's culture, the management setup in this country will be lean and Buchanan says his will be a hands-on role here.
Jetstar's expansion is part of the Qantas low-cost subsidiary's rapid expansion throughout the Asia-Pacific region which has seen its staff grow from 400 to 7000 and its revenue grow from A$300 million ($379.96 million) to A$3.5 billion since its launch.
Buchanan has been there since before the beginning.
He worked for Boston Consulting on two big Qantas projects and in 2003 was involved in the business development work for the establishment of a low-cost carrier.
When the airline was launched in May, 2004, he was hired as chief executive Alan Joyce's deputy before taking the helm last October.
"Having been part of its birth and development it's almost like a child that you're starting to see run and walk."
The airline flies to 20 cities in Australia, has been flying across the Tasman since 2005 and those services are set to expand, and unusually for a low-cost carrier flies to Bali, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and Hawaii.
Buchanan says he's particularly satisfied with Jetstar being the exception to other established or legacy airlines that have tried running budget carriers within their operation but given up, notably Air New Zealand and Freedom Air.
"A lot of people said it couldn't work, a low-cost carrier within a full-service carrier has never worked around the world. but we broke that mould. They said international wouldn't work but we broke that mould, they said long-haul low cost wouldn't work but it has."
For the 2008 financial year the airline reported a record A$118 million in profit before tax.
Buchanan estimates his costs are up to 40 per cent lower than full-service carriers. Costs are kept down by running a homogeneous fleet for the bulk of its routes (in New Zealand 177-seat A320s), quick aircraft turnaround, low head-office overheads and charging passengers for extras.
He says pay packages for individual crew members are higher than on full-service carriers because of a higher weighting on hours worked and profit sharing from sales onboard aircraft.
Buchanan grew up on the central coast north of Sydney, did an engineering degree at the University of New South Wales and for five years owned an IT consultancy before returning to business school to do an MBA. He was attracted to airlines for one of the usual reasons - cheap travel - but also the quick job satisfaction payback of starting new routes and seeing tourism industries spring up.
The heavily promoted Jetstar represents a more powerful threat to Air New Zealand than Qantas, which was steadily trimming services and continuing to suffer from on time performance problems.
Although it's providing more seats, Jetstar is cutting yet more services and this will give Air NZ comfort in the business market.
The New Zealand airline says "the failed experiment" of Qantas chasing the corporate market is over.
It has launched an unambiguous pitch for Qantas frequent flyers after last month creating a spoof website aimed at highlighting extra costs on budget flights.
Buchanan says he's not so interested in what the opposition is doing.
"We get on with our own business. Just like we work alongside Qantas, Air New Zealand is always going to have their spot in the premium market and a strong regional network."
