said. ‘Every year we made a profit, never lost The same plane he said went on to fly from money, until COVID, believe it or not!’ He Perth to London in 2018, the first time a said having Jetstar made Qantas a better plane had flown from Australia to London. airline. ‘We’ve got this pincer movement in the market, which is phenomenal. We have the lowest cost operator by miles,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got the full premium airline.’ We want to help kids that went through what my ‘It was one of the longest flights in the world, between the only two continents that weren’t connected. We deliberately flew it with Emily on its livery and with a female pilot, who happened to be a Campaigning family went through lesbian, as the captain. That summed up to me the spirit of Australia more than Alan Joyce is a world-class executive who is about more than just business. In 2017 he was named the world’s most influential LGBT business executive anything else having that combination of celebrating gender equality, LGBTI rights and indigenous culture.’ by The Financial Times and networking group OUTstanding for his vocal campaign in favour of same-sex marriage in Australia, which became legal that December. Joyce married his partner Shane Lloyd in 2019, and he says he felt it was important to speak out. ‘Qantas’s tagline is “The Spirit of Australia”, so we do believe that we should be a very important part of society,’ Joyce explained. In 2010 Joyce was a founding member of Male Champions of Change to encourage greater diversity in business. ‘It is about getting more women into senior positions,’ he said. ‘It’s made huge progress in breaking down a lot of the barriers and we’re very passionate about that.’ This respect for diversity went back a long time in Joyce and Lloyd donated AUS$1 million to the marriage equality campaign. ‘We were lucky to be able to do that,’ he recalled. ‘The no side was heavily funded by religious organisations,’ Joyce recalled. ‘We needed to make sure the yes side had good funding too to get through it,’ he added. ‘The great thing about Qantas is that all our people got involved,’ Joyce said. ‘We were invested as a group in the campaign - and so we should be - given that it’s very important to our customers, our employees and the general public. Thankfully, it was a great success in the end.’ Missing home Qantas, and it was one of the reasons he joined the airline. He is an ambassador for the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation to encourage indigenous employment and give opportunities to young people from these communities. ‘We want to help kids that went through what my family went through - and the disadvantage of trying to get into secondary and tertiary education - by helping them to get sponsorship,’ he said. Alan reflects, like many Irish people in Australia, he is homesick for his family. He flew home regularly in the past but hasn’t been able to see his mother and family in two years. ‘It is something I have never felt before. Thankfully we have video conferencing and I ring her on Facetime every morning just to see how she’s going but not being able to hug your mother is something I’d never thought would happen working for an airline. It is tough.’ Joyce said a bright spot in the last In 1994 Qantas started its Flying Art series bringing Aboriginal year was being given a Trinity College Alumni Award in April and Torres Strait culture to the world by painting their 2021, which his family tuned in online for. ‘The history and artworks on the exteriors of Qantas planes. Joyce said a reputation of Trinity is something else, and it’s been very highlight of his career was seeing a hand-painted Boeing helpful to my career,’ he said. ‘To get the award was another 787-9 Dreamliner depicting a striking artwork by Emily Kame level again.’ Kngwarreye being flown to Alice Springs to meet the family Tom Lyons BA (2001) is CEO at The Currency of the artist. ‘We had an amazing ceremony and the family came from 200 kilometres north, and they’d never been on an aircraft before,’ he recalled. Click here to watch the 2020/21 Alumni Awards
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