Already there’s chatter across the Tasman that Wallace is on the list of candidates to succeed Qantas CEO Alan Joyce when he retires, possibly at the end of the year.
Qantas loyalty boss Olivia Wirth and chief financial officer Vanessa Hudson are seen as other contenders.
Joyce said Wallace was ‘’top talent’’. Responsibilities at Air New Zealand spanned sales, revenue management, market development, alliances and cargo.
“Cam is inheriting a very talented team and will add to the depth of experience on our group management committee,” Joyce said.
Wallace joins an airline that is a much different and bigger organisation than Air New Zealand, where he worked for 19 years.
Qantas has around 23,000 staff (compared to 10,000 at Air NZ), 328 aircraft across the wider group (101 at Air NZ) and in the last six months had revenue of close to $11 billion (compared to $3.1b at Air NZ).
Of that, Qantas International and Freight had revenue of more than $4b.
The Qantas job Wallace starts in July is different to retiring fellow Kiwi Andrew David who was chief executive of both Domestic and International but for a reference point, David’s total remuneration for the year ended June 2022 was $2.4 million.
David was among the top five executives at Qantas whose pay is broken down in the company’s annual report.
The report showed Joyce’s remuneration was $6m, almost half of what it was immediately before the pandemic.
Joyce said Wallace would guide preparations for Project Sunrise, a plan first announced in 2017 to take on the final frontier of aviation with direct flights from the east coast of Australia to Europe and New York.
The Airbus A350-1000 was chosen as the preferred aircraft, and 12 Rolls-Royce-powered aircraft were ordered in May last year.
A cabin interior and service design influenced by medical and scientific research carried out on research flights and last week the airline unveiled prototypes for its first-class suites with a fixed flat bed and separate lounge recliner and wardrobe.
With just 238 seats, the aircraft is specially configured for marathon flights of up to 20 hours.
The inaugural flights are scheduled for take-off in late 2025, starting with Sydney to London and New York.
This will be a key focus for Wallace, as well as expanding the international network which is being made more attractive for travellers with a $110m revamp of lounges, including in Auckland.
It is unclear how the relationship with Air NZ may change or what if any changes Qantas will make on the Tasman, a route Wallace knows well.
One observer said the ‘’frenemies’' pact signed in 2018 worked well for both carriers who now have nearly all the traffic between them with Virgin Australia largely gone and they are able to feed each other’s domestic networks.
Wallace is not commenting on the Qantas job but a return to airlines was inevitable after a two-year spell learning the inner workings of the media, another area he’s intensely interested in.
Just before leaving Air NZ in 2020, in the depths of the pandemic and with only bad news for airlines, he was seeing through it.
Wallace said at the time. “We’ve talked a lot about compassion, we’ve talked a lot about resilience (but) we’ve got to be confident about our future, we’ve got to be confident about our network.”
He’s about to start work for an airline that right now is exuding it by the planeload.
