Former Qantas boss Alan Joyce is poised to enjoy $100,000-plus of free first class and business class flights each year until he turns 80 thanks to a lucrative executive legacy deal.
Despite having left Qantas last year as it was facing Federal prosecutions and battling to rebuild its reputation, Mr Joyce and his husband Shane Lloyd will be entitled to four long-haul and twelve shorter trips each year until 2046.
And despite the airline charging upwards at least $9000 for one first-class return trip from Sydney to Mr Joyce’s native Dublin, the airline valued his ongoing executive travel entitlements at just $32,000 in the fine print of its 2023-24 annual report.
Governance advisers Ownership Matters pointed to the lucrative perks while working through Qantas’s disclosure of $9 million-plus of bonuses taken away from Mr Joyce and hits to his former senior colleagues.
Ownership Matters recommended Qantas shareholders endorse the company’s remuneration report at their annual meeting on October 25, saying Mr Joyce’s loss of shares now worth $9.6 million reflected “accountability for the reputational crisis that engulfed Qantas”.
Qantas executives enjoy annual premium and international domestic flight entitlements that continue for a period equivalent to their length of service.
After almost 23 years working at Qantas and 15 years as chief executive, Mr Joyce had planned to leave in November last year under an orderly hand over to successor Vanessa Hudson.
But he left two months early after Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched a Federal Court action over the airline advertising tickets for flights it had already cancelled in the COVID-19 upheaval.
The Federal Court this week formally ordered Qantas to hand over $120m after the airline admitted that it had misled customers in 2021 and 2022.
In its 2023-24 annual report, Qantas pointed to the ACCC and the airline being found by the High Court to have unlawfully outsourced ground handling work while explaining a recent review of executive bonuses.
Qantas said events that damaged the group and its reputation “were due to a number of factors”.
A review completed in August had confirmed “mistakes were made by the board and management that contributed to the group’s significant and reputation customer service issues”.
Mr Joyce was stripped of incentive shares worth $8.4m at June 30 and $7.8m at the time of the review and $9.6m at current price.
Along with other what Qantas described as “accountable executive management”, Mr Joyce also lost a total of 33 per cent of his 2022-23 short-term bonus — costing him $902,000 before tax.
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