Akbar Al Baker’s Departure Marks A Break for Airline Industry
On February 1, 2023, it was finally over. Qatar Airways and Airbus announced an “amicable” settlement of their unprecedented legal dispute. The airline had sued the manufacturer over surface degradation issues on many of the carrier’s Airbus A350s.
Similar issues had been seen by other airlines and were dealt with quietly. Not in this case: Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker, known for rejecting aircraft deliveries over tiny cabin imperfections, would not have it. Airbus was going to fix this or pay dearly. He stopped taking more A350s and brought the case in front of a London court while the Qatari Civil Aviation Authority grounded the affected aircraft. More escalation? Impossible.
As it turned out, the dispute was the last public drama of an exciting career spanning 27 years as CEO at the airline. Eight months later, the airline announced “the appointment of a new group chief executive,” frankly, someone even insiders did not know: Badr Mohammed Al Meer, so far chief operating officer of Doha’s Hamad International Airport. In other words: Akbar will be gone very soon. The change will become effective on Nov. 5, though industry sources say the leadership transition will continue until the beginning of next year.
Al Baker, 62, is the longest-lasting current CEO of a major airline. It was also him who made Qatar Airways into a major airline in the first place, having taken it over with only a few aircraft in its fleet. Al Baker turned Qatar into a second Emirates—similar, but different. The airline is operating a large hub connecting long-haul services to long-haul.
Unlike Emirates, it also has a narrowbody fleet and is a member of one of the global alliances, Oneworld, and has stakes in several carriers abroad—among them Cathay Pacific, China Southern Airlines, International Airlines Group and LATAM Airlines.
Qatar Airways’ status of one of the most important buyers of aircraft, connected with its shareholdings, made Al Baker one of the most powerful figures in the industry. His departure likely marks the beginning of fundamental change for the airline.
According to industry sources, Al Baker did not leave voluntarily at this time. People who know him well say he would have liked to continue for longer and would have been very interested in becoming chairman of the airline. But his superiors, mainly Chairman Saad Sherida Al Kaabi—a powerful figure who is also Qatar’s energy minister—thought otherwise.
To this day, Al Baker micromanaged essentially everything of relevance at Qatar Airways. When his airline hosted the IATA annual general assembly in 2014, he would personally drive CEOs of other airlines around in a golf cart through the airport terminal, making sure they arrived at their gates comfortably in the middle of the night. A few days before, he had broken his arm in a car accident. But he simply would not delegate anything.
Corporate governance was simple: Al Baker would decide everything. This was not what Al Kaabi wanted for the future, the sources said. The chairman wanted to establish a new governance structure that was not 100%-focused on Al Baker, with stronger checks and balances. No middle ground could be found.
The A350 case is a good example of where the airline’s weaknesses lie. In Toulouse, key Airbus executives do not to this day understand how things went so badly wrong with Al Baker after the first paint deficiencies were discovered. In Doha, members of Al Baker’s management team tried desperately to gently steer him toward compromise. After all, an airline the size of Qatar Airways cannot operate without a relationship with one of the two big manufacturers. The higher-ups in Doha noticed, too, and it is said that the settlement was the result of talks between the state of Qatar and France.
It is sadly ironic that the conflict in which Al Baker wanted to demonstrate his powers may have contributed to his departure.
Compromise was never his thing, as many others in the industry including Boeing and numerous airline colleagues can recollect. And it did not get better: When Al Baker hosted another IATA meeting in 2022, he stated in some of his speeches that many airlines let their customers down during the pandemic—not so Qatar Airways, of course. Many colleagues were outraged that he misused the stage he was given by the association in such a way. Some of his peers simply stood up and left. Emirates Airline President Tim Clark stopped talking with him some time ago.
Al Baker was often brutally honest about what he really thought. When asked at an IATA event whether a woman could do his job, he said no. A woman could not do his job, he said, because his job was so difficult. That did not go down well, to put it mildly.
As much as people were offended and afraid, many also admired his achievements.
Following the departure of such a powerful figure, Qatar Airways will have to reinvent itself. A new corporate governance has to be established—along with a management team that is actually empowered, with Al Meer at the top. His experience as an airport manager will help, but the key will be the transformation of the airline into a more normal company.
What is unlikely to change is Qatar Airways’ positioning as a major player in the industry—this mandate given by its government has not wavered.
