Alan Joyce: Riding the Jet Stream

Alan Joyce in conversation with Deborah Snow

Date: Monday 14 September

Time: 6-8pm (Doors open at 5.30pm, come early for a drink overlooking Avalon Beach)

Location: Avalon Beach Surf Club

Controversial and polarising. Celebrated and reviled. Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas for 15 years. Proclaimed the most influential business leader by The Australian in 2011; heralded as the ‘turn around king’ for reviving Qantas in the aftermath of the GFC; named Businessperson of the Year by The Australian Financial Review; Companion of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday list 2017 for his service to the aviation industry as well as his commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion. Unabashedly mixing politics and business (controversial in itself), Joyce was a member of the Republican Movement, and one of the first business leaders to support gay marriage, which resulted in a pie being smashed in his face during a breakfast talk in Perth.

From those heights, Joyce fell off the pedestal. He was forced to resign in 2023, amidst mounting scandals and controversies — selling tickets on non-existent flights; refusing to make refunds; illegally sacking workers, while his own pay and bonuses climbed into the multimillions. 

Joyce was journalistically bludgeoned by Joe Aston in The Chairman’s Lounge: The Inside Story of How Qantas Sold Us Out, which exposed how Joyce bought and manipulated Canberra and powerful Politicians. We had Joe at a Bookoccino Event two years ago. Now we have Alan Joyce to tell his side of the story. Joyce says he wants “to set the record straight on what actually happened during my career.”

Checking him, keeping him straight, he will be interviewed by one of Australia’s most accomplished, respected, intrepid journalists, Deborah Snow, winner of two Walkleys, former ABC TV Correspondent in Moscow, former reporter on Four Corners, author of Siege: Inside the Lindt Cafe.

It is an evening that may be controversial, but most certainly will not be boring.

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“I wrote Riding the Jet Stream to set the record straight on what actually happened during my career. I also wanted to encourage young leaders to learn from my successes and my failures.” - Alan Joyce