Numbers don’t add up for maths graduate CEO
Lynne Embleton once harboured notions of being a forensic scientist.
Instead, she is now watching Aer Lingus being eviscerated by pilots whose pay demand has escalated to industrial action that is destroying the travel plans of tens of thousands of people.
But as chief executive of Aer Lingus, she’s been notably absent from the public discourse related to the pilots’ action.
Instead, it’s the airline’s chief corporate affairs officer, Donal Moriarty, who has been wheeled out to face the media and the Irish Airline Pilots’ Association.
Ms Embleton (54) has been running IAG-owned Aer Lingus since April 2021 and is the airline’s first female chief executive. Before that, she had been chief executive and chairman of IAG Cargo, a role she had held since 2017.
She had previously had a number of senior roles at British Airways, including being its managing director at Gatwick, and the director of strategy. She joined British Airways in 1992.
Apart from owning Aer Lingus and British Airways, IAG also owns Spanish airlines Iberia and Vueling.
The group was created in 2011, initially due to a merger agreement between
British Airways and Iberia. At the time, British Airways was being run by Willie Walsh, who had been Aer Lingus CEO from late 2001 to November 2004. He went on to run IAG until 2020.
Under Mr Walsh’s tenure, IAG acquired Aer Lingus in 2015.
Ms Embleton grew up in South Shields, near Newcastle, on England’s north-east coast, making her a selfdescribed Geordie.
She has a degree in maths, but did not want to be an accountant.
“I talked to the career service at the university and they said, ‘So, accountant or actuary?’,” she said in an interview with the Irish Independent last year.
“So, I went to do a master’s in operational research. I did a three-week placement at British Airways. I hadn’t ever been south that often.
“I wrote them an Excel macro to help them make operational decisions on the day. They showed me around Concorde, let me have a go in a simulator and when they offered me a job, I thought, ‘An airline? I could do that for a couple of years.’
“I spent several years on that operational research side, applying maths to problem-solving. It was data and analytics before data and analytics were trendy.”
And right now for Aer Lingus, IAG and Ms Embleton, the maths don’t add up.
Aer Lingus might not want to flinch, but it’s really IAG that will not want it to cave in to the pilots. At Aer Lingus, other staff such as cabin crew and those in the craft union have previously agreed to a 12.25pc pay deal.
But if the pilots were to get a near 24pc pay increase without any productivity or flexibility changes attached to it, other Aer Lingus staff can go back to the negotiating table.
That raises the prospect of the annual wage bill at Aer Lingus rising way beyond the extra €40m to €45m that it would if pilots got what they are looking for without conditions.
Such contagion could spread to other IAG airlines.
Ms Embleton will be under pressure to ensure that doesn’t happen.
But it’s Mr Moriarty (53) who has been thrust into the limelight.
Across newspapers, TV and radio, he’s been the voice of Aer Lingus as the airline deals with one of its worst employee disputes in years.
A lawyer by training, Mr Moriarty began working with Aer Lingus in 2009 as its company secretary.
He studied at UCD, graduating in 1992 and then going on to qualify as a solicitor. He worked for law firms including William Fry, before joining Iona Technologies and staying there for a decade.
He served as executive counsel at Aer Lingus from 2012 to 2016.
In 2017, he had a brief stint at semistate forestry firm Coillte, before returning to Aer Lingus later that year as its chief corporate affairs officer.