A Qantas A380 plane. The airline had to ground its fleet in 2010.
A Qantas A380 plane. The airline had to ground its fleet in 2010.
As Qantas boss for the past 15 years, Alan Joyce has been at the heart of some of the most dramatic events in airline history.
He grounded the entire Qantas fleet in a bitter union stoush and was in the hot seat as the airline teetered when the pandemic hitand was just 11 weeks away from failing financially.
But asked about his biggest single challenge, he said without hesitation the one that affected him the most was 13 years ago when an engine exploded on a Qantas A380 aircraft.
Onboard were 469 people and getting the plane down safely took heroic flying. And from a safety perspective, Joyce says the airline’s response to the QF32 crisis improved its standing.
In New Zealand for the airline’s launch of direct Auckland-New York flights, Joyce recounted to the Trans Tasman Business Circle the day of the near-disaster on November 4, 2010. That was around the time of the airline’s 90th birthday celebrations, its ambassador John Travolta was in Sydney, the mood was good and Joyce had just given a lunchtime speech to investors in the city.
“The way we found out now, it was bizarre in some ways. This was before everybody realised the full power of social media. I was coming back from the lunch and my head of investor relations was next to me and he jokingly said,’ I didn’t think your speech was that bad, but the Qantas share price has collapsed by 20 per cent’.”
His colleague found out that pictures were on social media of a Qantas aircraft having crashed in Indonesia - it turned out they were pieces of the damaged plane.
Joyce rang the airline’s operations centre and established QF32 was in trouble over Singapore after a problem soon after take-off.
Airlines have well-rehearsed emergency response processes, and a crisis team of executives was immediately stood up.
“We had the TVs on and the head of engineering just happened to see on the screen a part of the engine being thrown onto a ute in Indonesia. He said that’s a disc and it’s a disc failure, and ‘I don’t think you have any choice but to ground the whole fleet’.”
At the time Qantas had six super jumbos, a core part of its international operations.
Joyce was told by the head of operations that he had to make his mind up in a hurry because two flights were pushing back and one was taxi-ing for takeoff.
There were 1200 people on those planes and after hearing more about the problem Joyce made the big call.
‘’I said we all agree that we have no choice. We grounded the aircraft, they were on the ground for 23 days.”
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce. Photo / Michael Craig
He said it took that time to develop a test to check why the engines had a problem.
It turned out a 160kg turbine disc in the aircraft’s number two engine had disintegrated, with shrapnel causing extensive damage to the nacelle at the back of the engine, wing, fuel system, landing gear, flight controls and engine controls, and a fire in a fuel tank that was put out.
An investigation found that the failure had been caused by a stub oil pipe breaking. It had been manufactured improperly and led to a claim for compensation from Rolls-Royce.
In the book FLY! Life Lessons From The Cockpit Of QF32, pilot Captain Richard de Crespigny, said as the aircraft climbed through 7400 feet and he was about to turn off the seatbelt sign there was a relatively small boom, “followed one second later by a huge BOOM! which was like nothing I’d ever heard before”.
He wrote that of the aircraft’s 22 systems, 21 were damaged. Less than 50 per cent of the plane’s electrics and hydraulics were operational.
Joyce said the A380 cost more than $110 million to repair.
‘’It was on the ground for over a year, shrapnel went everywhere and we were very lucky.
“We had five pilots in the cockpit that did an amazing job to land the aircraft with most of the systems knocked out.”
Qantas has an enviable safety record and that was non-negotiable during the crisis. Nobody in the executive crisis team mentioned the cost of ordering the immediate ceasing of flights and then grounding the fleet until it knew more.
“To me it was probably the most challenging because then every day we did a press conference explaining to the public [and] it became an issue of safety,’’ Joyce said.
‘’And from being a negative, I thought it was the most positive thing for Qantas safety we could ever do because we had nobody in that meeting ever thinking how much is this going to cost?’'’
While that was a sudden shock to deal with, Joyce said later that leading a complex organisation such as an airline during the pandemic was a bigger managerial challenge.
‘’I do think though during Covid that in time, time-wise, that was most intense because you were locked down. It was harder doing stuff on video conferences and not having the energy of people in the room.”
Joyce steps down from Qantas at the end of the year when current chief financial officer Vanessa Hudson steps into the role.
* The Herald travelled to New York courtesy of Qantas.
Grant Bradley joined the Herald in 1993. He is the Business Herald’s deputy editor and covers aviation and tourism.
