Qantas’ legal fight goes on over loyalty of poached Virgin frequent flyer chief

A year after starting with Virgin Australia, Velocity chief Nick Rohrlach is continuing his fight in the Singapore Supreme Court with his ex-employer, Qantas.

Virgin Australia’s Velocity chief, Nick Rohrlach. Picture: Britta Campion

More than 12 months after starting as chief executive of Virgin Australia’s Velocity frequent flyers program, Nick Rohrlach is set to extend his legal battle with former employer, Qantas.

The case over the provisions of his work contract with Qantas and his jump to Virgin has returned to the Singapore Supreme Court.

The lawsuit first erupted when Qantas sought to enforce a non-compete clause in Mr Rohrlach’s contract to prevent him starting with Virgin for 10 months.

Qantas argued Mr Rohrlach – who was the Jetstar Japan chief executive – had accepted a senior role with its own loyalty business and was given access to commercially sensitive information before he was named the new boss of Velocity.

The matter ended up in the Singapore Supreme Court, where Qantas won an injunction preventing Mr Rohrlach from starting with Virgin in May 2021 until they went to trial.

The court then heard Mr Rohrlach had breached the terms of the injunction by getting involved in Virgin Australia’s business before the non-compete clause expired.

Phone and online messages between Mr Rohrlach, Virgin chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka and other senior executives were tendered to the court as evidence of these breaches.

In December 2021, the court found in favour of Qantas – which sought a jail sentence as penalty for Mr Rohrlach’s breaches. He was fined $S25,000 ($27,000).

A decision in favour of Mr Rohrlach in the appeal could potentially result in the court’s previous finding, that he acted in breach of the injunction, overturned.

Mr Rohrlach started work with Velocity last September but Ms Hrdlicka’s handling of his appointment was understood to have created long-lasting bitterness between the two airlines.

Already fiercely competitive, the Velocity and Qantas frequent flyer programs have taken their fight to new levels in 2022 with several “status matching” promotions designed to steal one another’s most loyal customers.

In the most recent case, Virgin Australia invited Qantas’s gold status members to “switch-a-roo” – tapping into public discontent with the national carrier.

Mr Rohrlach said the offer was in response to “a significant number of requests from members of other loyalty programs”.

Since joining Virgin, Mr Rohrlach has also overseen the rollout of a Business Flyer program not unlike Qantas’s own Business Rewards scheme, to woo small and medium enterprise owners with discount fares and lounge access.

In addition Virgin relaunched its equivalent of Qantas’s exclusive Chairman’s Lounge, known as Beyond. The airline also partnered with Myer to counter Qantas’s tie-up with David Jones.

Qantas has about 14 million frequent flyers, while Virgin’s Velocity program has 10.9 million.