Jetstar’s new boss faces a daunting task in helping Aussies fall back in love with the airline when she takes the top job later this year as fed-up customers grapple with cancelled flights and mechanical fleet issues trigger further travel chaos across the board.
Stephanie Tully will take over from Gareth Evans as Jetstar CEO in November, moving on from her role as chief customer officer at the airline’s parent company Qantas.
Both airlines have been suffering issues for months with Jetstar most recently struggling to get its Boeing 787 Dreamliners in the air as lightning strikes, bird strikes and delays in sourcing spare parts forced the company to scrap a number of flights.
Ms Tully has been with Qantas since 2004 and CEO Alan Joyce describes her as ‘an outstanding leader with a deep understanding of the customer experience’.
She takes on the airline as it reels from the effects of the Covid pandemic, a $796million loss in 2021, and an increasingly annoyed public frustrated that the pent-up demand for travel hasn’t been met.
New Jetstar CEO Stephanie Tully (pictured) will have her work cut out for her as she attempts to win over a public frustrated with flight cancellations
The most recent problem for Jetstar – a lightning strike in Cairns on Friday – grounded another of the carrier’s long range aircraft as it was forced to undergo maintenance in Sydney.
‘Three of our 11 aircraft in our 787 fleet are temporarily out of operation, however, our engineering team are working hard to safely return all aircraft to service by the end of this week but will always put safety ahead of schedule,’ a Jetstar spokesperson told Crikey on Wednesday.
The issue this week affected some flights from Singapore, Hawaii and Bali, while a separate issue earlier this month saw groups of passengers temporarily stranded in Tokyo, Bali and Bangkok.
Customers have taken to social media to air their frustrations online with an entire website called ‘dontflyjetstar’ recently popping up.
‘I had my flight to Honolulu cancelled when I was on the Hume Highway from Canberra, five hours from takeoff,’ one Twitter user PintoPoloPony wrote this week.
‘Two flight affected in six days. One delayed 12 hours, the other cancelled two hours from boarding,’ user Syatmel wrote.
Another Twitter user said they had their flight back to Australia from Waikiki cancelled five hours out and had to fork out $3,000 for a Qantas flight instead.
Jetstar is the budget subsidiary of Qantas with the flying kangaroo often lending Jetstar planes to cover gaps in their routes
The problems with lightning strikes on the new Jetstar 787s are complicated by the fact that the shell is made from composite material as opposed to the metal shells on older aircraft.
With a metal shell, an electric charge would leave one entry and exit hole on the fuselage or wing where maintenance teams would easily be able to inspect the damage.
But the composite material, which uses carbon fibre extensively, conducts electricity differently and a lightning strike can result in a patchwork of tiny holes that requires a much longer maintenance period.
The carbon composite materials also struggles with paint peeling off which has required airlines the world over to repaint aircraft in a costly and time-consuming process.
Pictures of the impacted 787s recently surfaced with duct tape patching parts of the wings and body.
The tape is actually called ‘speed tape’ and is an aluminium pressure sensitive material that’s commonly used on aircraft and race cars.
Engineers are able to use this as a workaround to prevent water from seeping through the peeling paint into the material but the fix isn’t a permanent one.
‘Speed tape’ over a plane wing, which is commonly used on aircraft and race cars
In addition to the aircraft issues, both Jetstar and Qantas are battling maintenance worker shortages, further delaying repairs and contributing to the frequency of cancelled flights.
‘Part of the Qantas and Jetstar issue is they don’t have spare aircraft,’ a Qantas group insider told Crikey.
‘The schedule is very tight and when multiple aircraft fail there is not much that can be done. We often don’t have a spare aircraft to roll into its place at short notice.’
Qantas will often lend aircraft to Jetstar to plug holes in their schedule but this becomes problematic when demand for Qantas is high, particularly around holiday periods.
Qantas group has bought more planes but they won’t arrive for a couple of years (pictured: queues at Sydney airport in September)
Earlier this year, Qantas Group announced it had ordered a run of new aircraft from Boeing rival Airbus that should significantly ease the number of cancelled flights.
The order includes 12 long-haul A350s for international routes and 40 domestic aircraft, a mix of A321XLRs and A220s.
These planes will take at least a couple of years to hit Australian skies, meaning that Ms Tully appears, in the short term, to have her work cut out for her.
‘Whoever (the new CEO) is they’ve become the mayor of sh**sville,’ as one Twitter user bluntly put it.
Customers will have to wait and see if Ms Tully can win back the townsfolk.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Jetstar and Qantas for comment.