WestJet Board Member, Alex Cruz, at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit 2023
WestJet Board Member, Alex Cruz, spoke to CAPA TV at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit 2023 in Budapest, Hungary in Mar-2023 about latest industry trends and company developments.
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Transcript
Alex Cruz:Well, it's great to be hanging around with everyone after this terrible pandemic, but the fact of the matter is that we're not really talking about it very much. We're talking about the day after, what's happening, what's been done really to solve the last few kinks of debt, very important, staffing, very important, but actually trying to move on to the next phase. So it's very reassuring to hear people about their plans, how they're planning to continue to get back to growth, network investment, etc. So there is definitely a lot of hope, which seems to be quantified by results, but there is a very good outlook based on what we're hearing at the moment. So there continue to be 3 things in my book. One is making sure that we continue closing the loop of everything related to the pandemic. There's still, there are still a lot of things that need to be addressed. Customers may not see it, but organizations are still affected by what happened. That cycle needs to finish. It may finish between this year and next year. Second, sustainability. There is no doubt about it that we as an industry are not going to be able to advance as much and as fast as other industries, which means that percentually, from a percentage perspective, we're going to become worse and worse and worse in terms of emissions. So what are we going to do about it? And it's great to see that everyone is talking and trying to do as much as we can, but that continues to be a huge issue. The third and last one is technology. Look, systems are breaking down, systems are being hacked, there is all kinds of competitive products coming in from other industries. What are we doing about our technology stack, some of them that are very old? And I'm also very glad that people are talking about this very actively. We are an industry that changes all the time. So if you're going to join the industry, get ready for change. If you're in it, know that change is happening all the time. And if you don't change, then something's wrong and you're probably not delivering a good result or a good customer experience or a good employee experience. So this is all about change and managing change. COVID was the biggest change we've ever gone through, but there's more to come.
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