Qantas Rebuilds its International Network
An honest interview with Cam Wallace, president of international and freight
Dear readers,
Today, let’s talk about Australia, a country that U.S. route planners find intriguing in winter when they have few logical places to send widebody airplanes. Qantas may not be the juggernaut it was before the pandemic, and Alan Joyce, the architect of what had been a very aggressive global strategy, is no longer around. But Qantas still knows how to defend against the more than 50 foreign airlines that fly into its home markets — including against Delta and United.1
Qantas is in a re-building mode. Joyce, a bombastic executive with a penchant for big ideas, had to retire a couple of months early last year after what a Bloomberg headline termed the “horror final weeks,” in which “the airline sold tickets for thousands of flights it had already canceled.” Under new CEO Vanessa Hudson, we’re now seeing a kindler, gentler Qantas that seems to be going out of its way not to irk loyal customers.
Behind the scenes — the stuff that matters to all of you — we’re seeing subtle strategy shifts. The nonstop flights from Sydney and Melbourne to New York and London (Joyce’s beloved Project Sunrise) remain on tap. But the airline earlier this year said it would build an international hub in Perth after the airport finally agreed to spend $5 billion Australian ($3.27 billion U.S) on terminal, airfield, and landside improvements. The entire project is due for completion by 2031.
To run the international operation, Qantas hired Cam Wallace, who joined the airline in June 2023. Wallace is an outrageously gregarious man who was a top commercial executive at Air New Zealand before he lost out on the CEO job to Greg Foran and departed the airline soon after. Wallace is working to tweak the Qantas network, which is growing again after massive Covid-era cuts.
Wallace and I met informally in Dubai in June and again last month (virtually) for an interview. We discussed several Qantas priorities, including the plans for Perth, increased competition from foreign airlines, the desire to make Perth a long-haul hub, the future of the A380s, and Project Sunrise, the most overhyped new routes in aviation.
Let's get into it.