the surprise retirement of long serving chief Alan Joyce<\/a>\u00a0this week with rising reputational damage at the airline.<\/p>\nThe former Virgin boss notes the Qantas brand \u201cis so powerful and strong\u201d that the airline will continue to demand a premium, although he acknowledges it had been tarnished in recent months.<\/p>\n
Scurrah started his career in aviation working with Qantas and then Ansett, and helped establish Regional Express or REX. He moved from running Australian operations of stevedore DP Ports to become CEO of the ASX-listed Virgin Australia.<\/p>\n
He was appointed to the role in 2019, with a mandate to improve the carrier\u2019s earnings and drive a longer term international expansion. However, the forced groundings of passenger planes during the early days of the Covid pandemic resulted in the collapse of Virgin. The airline was later acquired from administration by private equity firm Bain and Co and is now on track for a stock market listing either later this year or early next year. Scurrah saw the airline through the administration but left when Bain took charge and later joined Pacific National. Former top Qantas executive Jayne Hrdlicka now heads up Virgin.<\/p>\n
He tells the podcast getting named Virgin CEO was a dream that came true and before the pandemic hit he knew exactly where he needed to take the airline.<\/p>\n
\u201cVirgin had a great people culture and a really good frontline work ethic and attitude and it still does a really, really good job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had invested heavily in the product, chased after Qantas and going into the corporate market, which in isolation is a good thing to do. That\u2019s where all the money\u2019s made \u2013 not all \u2013 but most of the money is based on your revenues in the corporate market.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was an expensive pursuit. And so honouring that investment was for me to then simplify it a bit to bring profit back into the discussion with the shareholders or financial strength into the discussion with our people. And I certainly was very open with the market when I got the job to say we need to get us back to a strong profitable position.\u201d<\/p>\n
He tells the podcast Virgin was not going to try and be the same as Qantas, but to be different to them and get people to like the difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ambition to get to the same sort of route economics as Qantas was probably a leap too far,\u201d he says. But that meant Virgin would need to be rational on pricing to close the gap and its offering, keeping the product simple and lowering the cost base to win over customers that aren\u2019t \u201cstuck in the Qantas system\u201d.<\/p>\n
And while Qantas is currently under fire for losing sight of customers, Scurrah says it\u2019s important in running a company \u2013 including an airline \u2013 to accept that you can\u2019t keep everyone happy. However it is important to get the balance right.<\/p>\n
\u201cCustomers want to be happy; shareholders want to be happy; your people want to be happy \u2013 so I simplify the purpose of the companies I run to say \u2018my purpose is happy people, happy customers, happy shareholders\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they can\u2019t all be blissfully happy all the time. So my job is to keep them mostly happy most of the time because if you don\u2019t, the equilibrium is killed. You lose the balance,\u201d Scurrah says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I can say this with Virgin frankly, very happy people, very happy customers, very unhappy shareholders. And so if you lose the balance, there are extreme consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says in talks with unions over the years from aviation to waterfront workers, Scurrah says the discussion was to make sure people were happy \u201cbut there was a limit\u201d.<\/p>\n
While the notion of profit gets demonised by unions, Scurrah says he tries to explain why it\u2019s important for companies to be financially strong. By being strong this allows a company to employ more people, invest in new equipment and invest in safety as well.<\/p>\n
Scurrah tells the podcast that success \u201ccomes through a series of very small steps over a very long period of time\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone who\u2019s an overnight success in the world\u2019s eyes will tell you this is not something that just happened overnight,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Article by Eric Johnson, Associate Editor<\/p>\n
Source: https:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/business\/aviation\/i-saw-myself-as-ceo-of-qantas-says-former-virgin-boss-paul-scurrah\/news-story\/1bda6028f9a32a2740599a1388a1e37c[\/vc_column_text][vc_button border_width=”0″ link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fblenheimpartners.com%2Fcontact-us%2F|title:Contact%20Us”]Contact us[\/vc_button][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul Scurrah, who has worked in aviation, tourism and now runs Pacific National, didn\u2019t overthink his version of success but had an ambition to run an airline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":119130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\u2018I saw myself as CEO of Qantas\u2019: ex-Virgin boss - Blenheim Partners<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n