Airline chief’s flight of fancy to Wimbledon as poorly timed as Virgin Australia’s aircraft

Virgin Australia chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka.

The sight of Jayne Hrdlicka in the royal box at Wimbledon a week ago is likely to have offended almost any Virgin Airlines passenger who has suffered a cancelled flight or a delayed journey amid a bitter winter season at the nation’s airports.

And we regret to advise of even greater foolishness emerging from the Virgin C-suites, with the airline scheduled to hold a lavish degustation dinner for journalists and executives next week ahead of a marketing shake-up aimed at its customers.

Yes, Virgin’s customers, the very people that Hrdlicka appears to have been most unperturbed about abandoning during one of the most torrid periods of domestic flight.

Clearly forgetting that Virgin pootled towards its worst on-time performance last week, it stands to press ahead and, in a stroke of horrendous timing, present a Customer Value Proposition on Friday filled with ­assurances about high-quality journeys and other bunkum about service commitments.

Illustration: Rod Clement

This after the airline recently cancelled 14.7 per cent of its flights and recorded just 43 per cent of planes running on time, and while Hrdlicka enjoyed the final match between Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios.

We’re told the CVP was developed over a period of several months in consultation with Bain and Company, which is kept on retainer by the airline for a monthly fee in the order of several million dollars.

A Virgin spokeswoman said the dinner event was intended to update “our team and media … on our transformation at an event to thank our team members for their hard work”.

We also could not help but notice another significant ­departure from the airline in recent months, noting the exit of Melissa Patch, erstwhile of Virgin as its head of corporate communications, who turned up at Fortescue Future Industries earlier this month with an identical title.

Patch previously worked as a principal adviser to former prime minister Kevin Rudd and maintained the kind of Labor links to the newly formed Albanese government that few at Virgin seem to possess.

The only other person with similarly established Labor connections is Moksha Watts, who used to work for Anthony Albanese, and who resigned from the airline in December.

Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff was a late cancellation. Picture: Peter Mathew

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Off the itinerary

But if one person has a greater right to feel slighted by Hrdlicka’s overseas jaunt it’s Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff, who was listed in her diary for a June 15 meeting, only to have it rubbed out a fortnight in advance.

Pairing schedules with a premier is no simple feat, and Margin Call understands meetings were planned for Hrdlicka in the Apple Isle that needed to be discarded. Remember, too, that Tasmania is desperate for greater airline capacity and competition, so Hrdlicka’s flaking would have hurt.

As to why she dumped the Premier? We know that she was scheduled to fly out to the World Air Transport Summit in Doha three days later.

This would have required enduring a daylong trip to Hobart on Wednesday, then back to Brisbane for a long-haul flight to the Middle East on Saturday, along with any other commitments in between.

It’s a lot of flying, and something’s got to give, right?

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Big footy boots to fill

They say no one is irreplaceable, but this may not hold especially true for outgoing AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan, who seems to think he can’t be succeeded by just any old soul.

AFL supremo Gillon McLachlan joins in a selfie with a Brisbane Lions fan. Picture: Getty Images

Or so he tends to believe, apparently, which is why he’s touting a plan to split the role into twin CEO positions in order to run the game without him. The chatter, as Margin Call understands, is that Gillon is proposing an arrangement to split the position in half, with one CEO to manage the commercial side of the code and the other to tinker with its football and club aspects.

As to who would take up these posts, our colleagues John Stensholt and Jessica Halloran have already flagged contenders including the AFL’s in-house general counsel, Andrew Dillon, and Richmond CEO Brendon Gale. Margin Call can add to the list Warner Music Group Australasia president Dan Rosen as another possibility, even if that sounds slightly out of left field.

The only other piece of scuttlebutt we can add is an expectation that McLachlan will turn up on Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media board sometime next year, which would prove interesting given the ongoing discussion with the networks over broadcast rights.

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Fire and brimstone

Ellerston Capital’s most recent newsletter to clients provided a rambling journey through the hopes and despair of its portfolio manager, Ashok Jacob, who evidently has no compunction about using shouting caps lock and exclamation marks to terrify his readers.

Ellerston Capital fund manager Ashok Jacob. Picture: James Croucher

Performance-wise, Ellerston’s Global Equity Managers Fund hasn’t scored too badly against the usual indices when its returns are trailed back to 2019 (gains of 18 per cent, against 3.3 per cent for the S&P/ASX 200 Total Return Index).

Then again, those numbers are sharply reversed when they’re isolated for the volatility of FY22 and the calendar year (drops of 13.5 per cent for both measurements, but that’s after deductions for Ellerston’s management fees).

Jacob and fellow portfolio manager Arik Star opened their briefing optimistically enough and were upfront about the recent underperformance, telling clients the following 12 months would present a “generational opportunity” to build a portfolio for the next five years. “This is neither a time to drown in bearishness nor live in hope that yesterday’s bull market will be back tomorrow,” the pair wrote.

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But that was only a warm up for the fire and brimstone to come. “Investors are being burnt, and Millennials fried to a crisp,” they said. “The reality is that where markets have come from was abnormal and we won’t be seeing that AGAIN for a long time.”

More prophesying would follow. The US Federal Reserve would drive the economy into a recession of unknown depth and longevity. Bubbles would soon explode in a kind of sharemarket eschatology.

“What we are seeing at the moment is the bursting of a gigantic bubble, one of the largest the world has ever seen. However, this bursting process is far from complete.”

And for a further outlook: “We can’t help but wonder if the key work is ‘Peak’. Peak inflation! Peak consumer! Peak labour market! Peak ESG! Peak confusion! We wonder could we be at or close to any or all of these.”

Certainly something, or someone, is peaking. Perhaps a dose of Adderall might be in order ahead of the July monthly newsletter draft.