JAMES HOGAN PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE, ETIHAD AIRWAYS IN NOVEMBER LAST YEAR, when Etihad boss James Hogan was named as the Centre for Aviation’s airline executive of the year, he was hailed as a man who has “disturbed the global aviation equilibrium”. The use of the past tense is misleading. Under his leadership, Etihad is continuing to cause a great deal of turbulence, creating “a new and irreversible direction for the global airline industry”. No mean achievement
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LI JIAXIANG ADMINISTRATOR, CIVIL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION OF CHINA (CAAC) ASSUMING HE IS NOT re-shuffled out of his job under China’s new leadership, Li Jiaxiang could accelerate the re-drawing of the world air transport map and simultaneously stimulate a seismic shift in global business travel patterns. The vice-minister for transport and head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), Li has already announced plans to build 70 new Chinese airports over the next three years and reiterated his determination to empower his country’s airlines to buy nearly 1,000 new aircraft over the same time-frame. Speaking at IATA’s 2012 annual general meeting in Beijing, Li said that by 2015 China would have more than 230 airports, and Chinese carriers would have a combined fleet of around 4,700 aircraft, nearly 2,000 more than at present. Those planes and airports will need to be filled, and early indications are that another Mr Li – prime-minister-in-waiting Li Keqiang – may be ready at least to attempt to push through reforms to re-ignite China’s economic growth. The latter Li may find some of his proposals thwarted by Xi Jinping, a traditionalist who becomes China’s state president in March, but whatever happens, the former Li will certainly have the capacity to accommodate any surge in business traffic.
for a carrier that this year celebrates its tenth anniversary – the Abu Dhabi-based carrier was
although his travel career includes stints at Ansett, Hertz, Forte Hotels and, most memorably, BMI British Midland. Under his leadership,
Etihad has acquired a 29 per cent stake in Air Berlin and a 10 per cent holding in Virgin Australia. The carrier is also looking at buying into India’s Jet Airways and – at time of writing – increasing its 3 per cent stake in Aer Lingus. The shareholdings,
founded in July 2003, and started operations only four months later. Hogan became chief
executive in 2006, joining from Gulf Air,
AKBAR AL BAKER CHIEF EXECUTIVE, QATAR AIRWAYS IN MARCH THIS YEAR Qatar Airways (QR) will add a sixth Chinese destination – Chengdu – to its network, underlining the seismic shift in world air travel patterns. Born in 1994 as a tiny regional carrier serving a handful of destinations with four aircraft, QR was relaunched in 1997 after the appointment of Akbar Al Baker as chief executive officer. By December 2012, it was serving more than 120 destinations and had taken delivery of its first B787.
The new flights between Doha and Chengdu add to the existing flights to
Hogan says, are the basis for a new international aviation business model. “We believe the old alliances are fracturing – they only work for the big boys,” he told The Times last month. “Ours is the smarter way forward.”
QR’s home capital from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Hong Kong. Significantly, they link to onward flights from Doha to more than a dozen points in Africa, where China is the largest international investor by far.
Air transport’s traditional east-west axis is being superseded by diagonal axes running from the US and Europe to southeast Asia, and from northeast Asia to Africa – Qatar is at the crossroads. One nominator is Adam White, managing director at TMC Baxter Hoare. He says: “Al Baker is probably the most dynamic, hard-working leader in the global travel industry – bar none. He is half visionary and half demanding detailist.”