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THE PAY PACKAGE for the Irish CEO of Qantas nearly doubled in the company’s latest financial year – catapulting him to become one of the world’s best-paid airline bosses.
The Australian airline’s latest annual report shows that Tallaght-born Alan Joyce was paid AU$24.6 million (€16.5 million) in the 12 months to the end of 30 June 2017, a 90% increase on what he earned the year before.
Joyce is now the best-paid airline executive in the Asia-Pacific region. His pay package dwarfs that of Europe’s top-earning airline chief, Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, who received €3.26 million last year.
Meanwhile, Dublin-born IAG chief executive Willie Walsh, whose airline group includes both British Airways and Aer Lingus, earned just over €3 million in 2016, down from around €8.9 million the previous year.
Under Joyce, Qantas cut thousands of jobs, retired older planes and dropped unprofitable routes in an effort to reverse losses. In August, the airline reported its second-highest annual profit on record, AU$1.53 billion.
In 2014, Joyce was awarded AU$4 million of the Qantas’s shares as part of a long-term incentive scheme. He would only receive the shares if he managed to successfully pull off a three-year turnaround plan.
Since then, Qantas’s shares have quadruped with the value of Joyce’s stake swelling to AU$18.4 million.
“There is no question that these pay outcomes are high. That’s because they reflect the company’s exceptional performance,” Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford said in a statement.
“For a business that was facing an uncertain future three years ago, and was in no position to pay bonuses to any of its people, the fundamentals that underpin today’s pay disclosures show how far we have come.”
World’s longest flights
Last month, Alan Joyce unveiled an ambitious plan to launch the world’s longest non-stop flights, from Australia’s eastern seaboard to Europe, as part of an undertaking dubbed ‘Project Sunrise’.
“Qantas will challenge both Airbus and Boeing to deliver an aircraft capable of regularly flying direct services like Sydney to London, Brisbane to Paris, Melbourne to New York non-stop with a full payload by 2022,” he said at the time.
He said the non-stop flights would take up to four hours off the journey from Sydney to London, which is now just over 24 hours.
Born in Tallaght, Alan Joyce started his aviation career at Aer Lingus. He moved to Australia in the mid-90s, working for now-defunct carrier Ansett.
He served as founding chief executive of low-cost airline Jetstar from 2003 to 2008, which was when he joined Qantas as CEO and group managing director.
Joyce is considered one of the world’s most influential gay business leaders, featuring in the ‘Top 100 leading LGBT executives’ list compiled by the Financial Times and business group OUTstanding.
Written by Conor McMahon and posted on Fora.ie
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The solution is obvious….. arm the doctors and nurses…….
@Jonny:
Too many doors.
@Jonny: Don’t forget the patients….
@iohanx: Arm the doors with semtex duh.
@Jonny: don’t forget the candy stripers.
Sounds like a bad B movie!
(Hospital volunteers, also known as candy stripers in the United States)
@Jonny: Arm the teachers and post them in hospitals. That’ll show them.
@iohanx: Which were NOT LOCKED! Insane!
@Jonny: or maybe dogs with bees in their mouth, and when they bark they shoot bees at you.
@A$AP Ragnick: Release the robotic Richard Simmons.
@Colm de Cleir: and the dogs outside
Oh but guns don’t kill people….people do right. The circus continues. What a messed up country!
@Warren kennedy: Yeeeehaw. The only thing that can git a bad guy with a gun, is good guy with a gun… yeeeeehaw… tighten those stirrups and let me take you for a ride. Yeeeehaw. Banjo music yippee dee doo.
They are absolutely p@thetic.
@Warren kennedy: I cannot believe this is after happening in America!!
The land of the free nope the land of the scared going school, work or play not sure if you or loved ones get home alive.
@Mick McGuinness: I am sorry you feel that way.
Feel free to live in Ireland. On the other hand I immigrated and never regretted it. To each his own.
@Dermot N Killian: You’re literally one in millions. Who cares if you’re happy.
It was unclear what prompted the deadly assault….. its a shame people/teenagers can’t use their assault rifles responsibly
Shoulder shrug…
America makes money on selling guns to anyone
Another mass shooting in America? Must be Thursday.
@Colin B: Could be a Tuesday, or a Saturday… Note that since the one at Uvalde, there have been over twenty mass shootings (at least four people hit by gunfire in the same incident). Their society is lost to guns now.
4…surprised it made the news…any other country this would be a tragedy…Will be for the people involved but for most of America another day another shooting, just part of life. Somebody please hold a big mirror up to America!
@Damien Leen: my guess is that it’s because it’s in a hospital and came soon after the school shooting.
It really feels like the NRA has declared war on America….
We’ve been cooking up the zeros. We’ve been doing all the sums. The outcome of this court is, we need more guns.
Another tragedy in America. At one of the recent school ones , the gun nuts were saying it wouldn’t have happened if the teachers were armed in the schools – and then called for teachers to be armed in the schools.
.
This latest mass shooting was at a medical facility. What’s next? A call to arm the doctors and nurses too? Let not discriminate? Let’s also arm the receptionist at their desk. What’s their preference? A semi-automatic or sub-machine gun? Doctors and nurses in an operating room, strapped with their weapons?
.
When does the NRA/Republican craziness end? No – wait. It’s all the open doors fault, of course! There’s a free gun for everyone in the audience. Let’s liven up the Late Late show with such madness? No. When does it all end for America? In more unnecessary deaths – that’s sadly where!
.
* I make this post as NOT a fan of the Democrat party either!
@Jeff Rudd: it’s becoming like the old w6old west.. everyone armed … there will be duels next to settle disputes.
Only 4,chicken feed.not news worthy.
@Macus Mc Mahon: T’is practically good news.
The US Corporation lives on the sale of arms throughout the world and now the Irish ‘government’ and commentariat is willing to sign us up to the latest sales drive by the US’s Nato department.
@Bramley Hawthorne: any links to that?
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Only this morning “This Morning” RTE1 Radio show, was going on about NATO. Yesterday in the paper’s, Leo was advocating that he can convince us to join yet another military setup.
All this comes after two recent polls (that’s he’s deliberate ignoring) exposing quite clearly that the mass majority of Ireland people do NOT want to join further mass military setups.
Only 4? Sure that’s nothing.
The 19th mass shooting since the Uvalde.
The American public are ‘getting high on their own supply’ of guns.
It would be ok for them to use the guns to kill lesser armed people in far countries – not
The only way that gun laws will ever change in the US is when some maniac with a semi automatic gun enters a parliamentary building and shoots a number of the legislators. Only then, will the message sink in that their gun laws are so so wrong.
@Kárl: a congressman was shot dead at a baseball game for politicians a few years back. Nothing changed. Nothing will ever change until they stop letting special interest groups like the NRA buy and elect lawmakers. The people clearly don’t have the will to bring them to talk.
If only there was a way to stop the madness.
I hear the next one will be less than a week away….. how bad is it that I’m not even wrong :(
Very simple answer, machine gun turrets at the entrance to every medical facility shooting anyone dead if they get within 50ft of the facility!
Who the hell left the doors open??? They should be locked up!
@Andrew Lavelle: the person, or the doors?
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