Vanessa Hudson, who will replace Alan Joyce as Qantas Airlines’ chief executive in November, inherits an airline still struggling to resume services after the pandemic and border closures shuttered much of the global aviation industry in 2020.
The silver lining for Qantas has been that high demand for air travel has enabled it to charge higher airfares. It even managed to report a A$1.43 billion profit in the second half of 2022.
But these conditions won’t last. As Hudson – an accountant who joined Qantas in 1994 and has been chief customer officer since 2018 – deals with the highly unusual short-term challenges that come with recovery, she will increasingly have to turn her mind to all the long-term challenges that existed for Australia’s flagship airline before 2020.
