Flybe: Taking the Lead

Can we take a step back to when you joined Flybe, in 2017, as CEO. Can you share some context around the position of the company and the role you stepped into?

I was based in the US when I got the call. I knew the company, because I was in charge of Air France KLM, when they were based in the UK, a number of years ago. I always had a great admiration for Flybe, because their business model was about connecting the regions in the UK and, you know better than I do, it’s very difficult to go from one region to another, because of the poor rail and road infrastructure. It was definitely serving a business model and a purpose that was obvious for all, not only customers, but also stakeholders.

I was definitely passionate about it and I joined in January 2017. My predecessor had already gone. He left before I arrived and I joined a team led by the chairman who became executive, to bridge the gap. I will say that the company was already in a challenging environment because the company was not profitable and was showing an evolution of the bottom line that needed to be improved. You join an organization and you know that you will have to improve its performance, but that’s fine because, in a way, since I started in the industry, that’s what I’ve done. The airline industry is always seeking to improve their margin.

When you work in organizations that have a history – because the low cost started with a clean sheet of paper and it didn’t have to work on efficiencies – they work on a business plan that was all about costs and infrastructure. They didn’t have any legacy to deal with, because everything was built, consistently, with the best practices of the industry, from the start.

The first year was about making sure we were able to speed up the business plan and to improve the margins. You can improve margins, in an airline, by doing quite a long list of things, but it’s about operational efficiency, it’s about productivity, it’s about renegotiation of the contracts. It’s about improving revenue; that’s always the most enjoyable thing, because revenue is about being the preferred option for the customer. We did a lot of work, with a great team and we realized, quite soon, that it was interesting, in parallel with developing the business plan, some partnership solution didn’t only mean M&A, but finding a partnership with our culture.

It was a very complex project. What you need to do, not only as chief executive, but as director of a company, making sure you explore all opportunities – internal, external, organic, non-organic – to see what the best future for the organization is. In a very challenging environment, that became even harder, as Brexit got closer and closer. In this type of environment, you need to make sure that the team understands where you want to go and create transparency with your team. That’s the most challenging part, when you are dealing with a crisis, is how do you keep the team together and also understanding what is going on. That’s the most challenging part of any situation like this one, compared to a gross situation, where you have more time and you also have more time to think, because you don’t have to react and develop short-term actions.