Qantas needs to rebuild brand to be ‘loved not hated’ says Emirates boss

Emirates boss Tim Clark says Qantas must return to being a quality brand to maintain the long partnership between the two airlines.

Emirates President Tim Clark.

Emirates president Tim Clark says Qantas needs to return to being “loved and not hated” as a brand to continue their 11-year airline partnership.

In Melbourne for the Emirates-sponsored Australian Open, Sir Tim offered his views on a wide range of topics, from Boeing’s current woes and high airfares to making air travel more comfortable for passengers.

On Qantas, Sir Tim said he was sorry to see former chief executive Alan Joyce go, describing him as a thought leader in the airline industry and a “good guy” who had endured a tough time.

But he said new chief executive Vanessa Hudson understood what needed to be done to address issues which have arisen in the wake of “the most torrid time in their history”.

“There’s been bumps in the road, we know that, but in the end they’re still there for the Australian consumers and I think they’re going to improve what they do,” said Sir Tim.

“They’re going to build themselves a brand that is loved not hated and I think that’s going to happen fairly rapidly, and it’ll be the quality brand we need them to be because we’re so embedded in them with what we do, we’re invested with them.”

Emirates president Tim Clark has confidence in Vanessa Hudson to rebuild the Qantas brand into one that’s loved not hated. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Luis Ascui

He said it was not only Qantas which had experienced a backlash for making big profits in the wake of the Covid pandemic, aided by high airfares and huge demand for travel.

The widespread public outrage which followed was something of an amusement to Sir Tim, who said airlines seemed to be between “a rock and a hard place” when it came to profitability.

“If you make money you’re price gouging, if you lose money you’re useless,” he said.

“You don’t get the same heartache over bus companies, or mining companies or banks. You accept the banking community is going to make huge amounts of money and they do, but when the airline industry starts to make a reasonable return on its investment everybody screams.”

Emirates, for one, aimed to maintain healthier margins of 5 to 9 per cent, instead of the 2 to 3 per cent which had become the hallmark of the airline industry.

Sir Tim said they now recognised people would pay more to fly Emirates, helping to “align the stars financially”.

“We will do what we can to keep them there,” he said.

A significant part of the equation was a quality product, and Sir Tim was reluctant to reveal how Emirates might raise the bar even further in premium cabins.

Privacy doors, lie-flat beds, minibars and shower suites were standard on Emirates’ A380s and many other airlines offered similar luxuries.

He said they would continue to innovate on not just premium products but in the economy cabin as well, but the real improvements needed to be made on the ground.

“That’s where we need to look because if you can strip out the queuing at check-in by removing check-in, if you could remove the queuing at central search and the agony of going through that by removing central search and if you have outbound immigration you remove that as well,” he said.

“Imagine the joy of getting out of a car or taxi and walking straight into an airport, going straight into a shopping mall and emptying your pockets, having a wonderful meal before getting onto an aeroplane. In the future, that’s what we need to do make the ground product more enjoyable and less hassle than it is today and believe me we all know it is an absolute hassle.”

Emirates’ bar on its A380 aircraft. Picture: Jasper Juinen

Although Emirates was perhaps best known for its A380s, boasting the biggest fleet of the superjumbos in the world, its future was Boeing 777X with 205 of the widebody aircraft on order.

In the wake of the confronting door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max 9, Sir Tim said Emirates was insisting on greater access to the construction process.

He said it was clear quality assurance was not where it needed to be at Boeing and he urged the US manufacturer to “get its production house in order”.

“Clearly the whole engineering side of Boeing needs to be shaken up in a sense that the whole attention to detail of production of their aircraft at the shop floor level has got to be reviewed. There’s no way they can leave things as they are,” said Sir Tim.

“The aircraft are good aircraft, their designs are second to none. This is not about the aircraft, it’s about how they put it together.”

He would even accept a bigger blowout in the timeline for new aircraft deliveries, if it meant they received a “well constructed” aeroplane.

“I would say to Boeing ‘we’ve had a five-and-a-half year delay on the 777-9, but don’t give us aircraft that are going to give us difficulties once we get them because your quality gate issues aren’t where they should be,” he said.

“As hard as it would be for us to accept a further delay, we would rather have aircraft that have been well put together and do the job for us.”

Originally published as Qantas needs to rebuild brand to be ‘loved not hated’ says Emirates boss