Qantas was one of Australia’s top brands for years even as Joyce leaned into controversy. 

In 2011, he grounded its entire fleet over a union dispute, but the sacking of 1,700 groundstaff in 2020 while collecting covid stimulus payments, followed by a surge of flight cancellations and lost luggage once border restrictions lifted, prompted analysts to warn the cost of repairing the airline’s reputation may hurt profit.

Joyce’s final compensation totalled A$21.4 m including bonuses, but the company said at the time it reserved the right to withhold some pending an external review of how the airline which sells nearly two-thirds of Australian domestic fares was run.

Qantas published the review yesterday, which blamed the company’s reputational crisis on a “command and control” leadership style, and said it was cutting Joyce’s final package to just over half the original amount.

“There was too much deference to a long-tenured CEO who had endured and overcome multiple past operational and financial crises,” said the report by McKinsey & Co senior adviser Tom Saar.

'Adversarial' leadership style

“(Qantas) had a ‘command and control’ leadership style with centralised decisions and an experienced and dominant CEO,” the report added.

“This contributed to a top-down culture, which impacted empowerment and a willingness to challenge ... decisions of concern. That cultural characteristic underpinned some of the events that affected the group’s reputation.”

The Qantas board had “limited visibility or appreciation of the manifestation of this cultural characteristic”, the report noted, adding that the company had already replaced some directors and top managers.

The report also said that the company was re-setting its relationships with external stakeholders in light of an "adversarial approach to engagement" under Joyce.

And the airline had brought in a stricter internal approval process for CEO share sales, the report said, noting Joyce's sale of A$17m of Qantas shares in June 2023, a few months before his scheduled retirement, contributed to a loss of trust among stakeholders.

Qantas agreed in May to pay A$120m to settle a regulator lawsuit over the sale of thousands of tickets on already cancelled flights.

The airline, which reports full-year results on August 29, is still waiting to learn how much it must pay after losing a separate lawsuit that found it illegally fired 1,700 ground staff in 2020 to stop them from taking industrial action like strikes.