Virgin Australia Group, CEO, Jayne Hrdlicka at the CAPA Australia Pacific Aviation Summit 2022
Jayne Hrdlicka is the Chief Executive Officer of the Virgin Australia Group. Jayne has over 20 years of leadership experience in the aviation, consumer and industrial sectors, and prior to her appointment with the Virgin Australia Group, Jayne was formerly Chief Executive Officer of a2 Milk Company. Jayne also held various leadership roles at Qantas Group for nearly a decade. She was instrumental in the design of Qantas’ loyalty program and was Chief Executive Officer of Qantas Loyalty and Digital Ventures, as well as Chief Executive Officer of Jetstar Group. Jayne is a former senior partner with Bain & Company in the firm’s Customer Strategy and Marketing Practice and also led Bain’s Customer Practice for the Asia region. Jayne is the Chair of Tennis Australia and is a member of the Hawaiian Airlines’ Board of Directors. She is also a member of the Sydney Medical School’s Advisory Board, and a member of Chief Executive Women.
Transcript
Jayne Hrdlicka:As an industry, it's been quite difficult to go from low and volatile flying levels to sustain very high levels of activity. It's been tough on our people, it's been tough on our business, and we're in a position now where we're feeling really confident that we've got enough people and we have pulled back flying to ensure that there's a big enough buffer now to manage the ups and downs with illness rates in the business. business. It's pretty tough for the entire industry. It's been tough for all businesses in Australia learning how to manage higher levels of absenteeism than we experienced before the pandemic. And I think we're in a good spot now. Our, our cancellation rates are very low. They're back to levels that are below where we were before the pandemic, and our on-time performance is back above 70%. And we'll continue to see that grow to the levels of on-time performance that we experienced pre-pandemic. The 33% market share strategy for Virgin Australia is really important to us. It matters a lot to us to be able to serve the needs of our guests. As a value carrier, that means value-conscious corporate, small-medium-sized business, premium leisure, and value-conscious leisure. So we've got a big group of customers we're needing to solve for, and we've worked out what that means from a network depth and breadth standpoint, and that means roughly 33%. Also, if you look back at history, Virgin Australia was 31% pre-pandemic. Tiger was about 8, and we knew of the Tiger's market share position. About 2% of that was a group of customers that we thought we should be drawing into Virgin Australia. So it makes rational sense looking back, it makes good sense going forward, and we're really keen to be ensuring we've got the fleet to deliver against the growth expectations we have for the market. Domestic flying is the core of the core for Virgin Australia. We're really clear about who we're serving, we're really clear about their needs, so domestic is the most important thing for us. Short-haul international is second, and we know with the same aircraft we can serve the needs of Australians in and around the region through short-haul flying. We've just gotten started with respect to international flying with the 737 fleet, and there's a lot more to come there, which we're super excited about. Long-haul, we're solving with our partners. We've got unbelievable partners to serve America, Europe, and Asia. For the US, we've got the world's best carrier in United Airlines, who have done a phenomenal job through the pandemic and are really going from strength to strength today. They provide the best network reach for Australians into the United States, so we're really happy about them as, as part of our family. Qatar Airways has just joined our family. They're providing the best possible network into Europe and parts of Asia for our guests, and they're actually rated as the world's best airline right now. I just flew in last night. From Doha, and it is a phenomenal experience. We're really excited about that. Singapore Airlines is also a great airline and have been a longtime partner of Virgin Australia. They remain our partner and super important to us into Asia. And ANA is also a really important partner for Virgin Australia, as is Hawaiian Airlines for people looking to head down into Hawaii. So we feel like we've covered our guests' needs from a long-haul standpoint. There may be opportunities over time to look at look at partnership opportunities for long haul, but there's a very high hurdle for us in beginning to contemplate anything like that. It would have to stand the test of a risk-adjusted return that justified the, the added risk for, for us as a business. So I think for us, we're solving for our guests' needs. We're really clear about what they need. We've solved for that, and we're excited about the focus that we have as an airline.
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