Qantas CIO quits

Qantas’ CIO, Luc Hennekens, has quit his post and will leave the airline at the end of September to move closer to his family and pursue a new role at an organisation in France.

In an internal message sent to staff on Monday morning, Rob Marcolina, group executive for strategy, transformation and IT, said under Hennekens’ guidance, the airline introduced a new service centre, continued to move digital apps to the cloud, and improved service performance and project delivery.

“Luc has been part of putting Qantas at the forefront of innovation in the IT space, championing the role of digitisation to enhance our customer experience, while reducing operational run costs,” he said.

“While this [Hennekens’ departure] is a disappointment for Qantas, I know the IT leadership team that Luc has helped to build will continue on this fantastic journey.”

Marcolina said the airline will start the search for the CIO position shortly.

Hennekens joined Qantas in January 2013 – initially as CTO – before moving into the CIO role in September 2013.

During his time at Qantas, Hennekens shifted more of the airline’s workloads to the cloud to drive shorter, more iterative projects.

One program called Project Helix, restructured how Qantas did application maintenance services. The groundbreaking outsourcing agreement saw Tata Consultancy Services take responsibility for the airlines application management and maintenance.

Follow Byron Connolly on Twitter: @ByronConnolly