Yahoo Finance Two top executives quit at Qantas
Two top employees of Qantas’ executive team have decided to leave the company.
As a result of a restructure within the company, both the CEO of Qantas International and the CEO of Qantas Domestic have resigned from their positions.
The Qantas Group announced the surprise resignations and team changes to the executive team on Friday.
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CEO of Qantas International Simon Hickey will be replaced by Gareth Evans who will take on the role of CEO of Qantas International and Freight.
Lyell Strambi, the CEO of Qantas Domestic, will be succeeded by Andrew David, the current Chief Operating Officer for Qantas Airways.
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Announcing the changes, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said the transition to the new structure would begin in the New Year with changes to be finalised by March 2015.
"This new executive team will lead this work forward to deliver for our customers, shareholders and employees according to the strategy we have laid out," Joyce said.
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The changes to the executive team come after a week with Qantas in the media spotlight for the wrong reasons.
Joyce has had to defend the reliability of his airline after four Qantas planes were forced to turn back in the space of two days.
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Joyce downplayed the seriousness of such mid-air turnbacks arguing that it was not an unusual occurence with flights.
"We have really high reliability. We have low levels of turnbacks compared to most of the world fleets," Joyce said.