Fiji Airways managing director/chief executive, Stefan Pichler, is now counting his last few days in the country.

He will return to Germany next month to head turnaround Germany’s, Air Berlin.

But before he leaves and in light of the fact that no one has yet been appointed as his successor, we caught up with Mr Pichler in a bid to update readers as to where Fiji Airways is placed.

What would be your involvement with Fiji Airways from next month?

I will continue to assist with the selection of the new CEO as well as the transition period that follows. I will also remain as a Board Member of Fiji Airways and continue supporting the strategic development of the group.

It’s important to note that Fiji Airways now has an outstanding group of senior managers, which include extremely qualified and capable locals and a mix of seasoned aviation professionals who are expatriates. So its more or less business as usual for the Fiji Airways Group and this will not change.

Who all have been shortlisted for the CEO/MD

position?

Out of a list of 42 candidates, we have shortlisted them down to three. We will be interviewing them followed later by negotiations with the most promising candidate(s).

We have to find somebody who has proven leadership and people skills to lead this team into the future.

What new routes have been identified?

We have strong underlying demand from China and we also have strong demand historically from Japan, so we need to create a business case for each one to decide on whether we fly to Tokyo or Shanghai or even Beijing.

What we are doing now is to start discussions with potential airline partners to feed into those routes. We cannot launch a new route by trial and error and just start flying to a new destination without any partners. If we start a new route, it has to work and it has to be sustainable profitable.

What is the national carrier’s biggest strength (highlights of 2014)?

The biggest achievement has been to create a team of committed and motivated individuals who all work together for the very best of Fiji Airways Group.

Numbers just follow the people, so we had and we are having a great performance as a result of this team spirit. I’m proud to say that we have rigidly followed our Five Year Master Plan, and a glance at our achievements and announcements over the past year highlight this.

We have introduced or will soon introduce new flights (Suva-Sydney, Suva-Samoa, Nadi-Honiara, Nadi-Wellington) over the past year, and increased (or will soon increase) frequencies to Los Angeles, Hongkong, Funafuti, Christchurch, Melbourne, Nuku’alofa, Apia.

We’ve re-branded Pacific Sun to Fiji Link, and of course re-fleeted its ATR fleet. We’ve had profit share among our staff members for the first time, and everything points to this continuing in 2015, together with a dividend for our shareholders.

We’ve announced the leasing of a B 737-800 and an Airbus A330-300 which will both enter our fleet in 2015, and have finalised agreements for these.

And we have done all this while sticking to our objective – which is to deliver excellent profits. We will announce our 2014 financial results at the end of February. And this will be the best result in the history of Air Pacific, respective Fiji Airways; more than double of the best profit we previously achieved.

What is its biggest weakness?

We are geographically somehow more exposed to engineering and maintenance issues, as it takes us longer to get some parts for replacement and at some ports the maintenance facilities are poor.

In terms of human resources, where does Fiji Airways stand?

We are continuing with our strategy to progress local talents in their careers with Fiji Airways.

In fact, just this week we announced two senior management appointments with Shaenaz Voss, who was former GM Fiji Link, now heading up our Industry, International and Government Affairs function, and Thomas Robinson who was GM Maintenance and Engineering will now take over the reins at Fiji Link.

These are both very crucial positions to the Fiji Airways Group and both are highly capable individuals who I have complete faith in to elevate the group further.

We are committed to career progression for all Fiji Airways staff and this also includes creating more jobs for Fijians in the company. I stress that Fiji Airways will always work in the best interests of Fiji and Fijians.

Feedback:  jyotip@fijisun.com.fj