Etihad’s Tony Douglas: ‘Don’t fight the storm’

After spending a year battling the biggest crisis his industry has faced, Tony Douglas has come to a simple conclusion: don’t obsess over things that are out of your control. “You know what? It is actually OK to have no idea exactly how this is going to pan out,” says the British CE of Etihad, Abu Dhabi’s national airline. “The trick to it is to be able to embrace ambiguity.”  A phlegmatic approach is useful given the state of the airline industry. The pandemic started off as a minor operational concern for global airlines as they suspended flights to mainland China in February last year, but it has since spiralled into a crisis that has parked half of the world’s passenger aircraft and is stretching into its second year. Douglas’s team meticulously charts predictions for the industry’s recovery from rival airlines, investment banks and consultancies, but has watched helplessly as these have all been undone by rising infection rates around the world. “Every time we have looked at this, on a monthly basis, it has continued to move to the right”, and get worse, he says. Interview has more.<br/>