At 40,000 feet, Carrie Hurihanganui knows how to deal with life-or-death trouble.

When a distressed passenger is trying to force open the door of a jet hurtling at 900km/h above the Earth, it’s time for
a cool head.

“There were certainly times – and you often hear about mixing alcohol and medication – when people would become more aggressive,” says the former Air New Zealand flight attendant, now one of the country’s top business leaders as chief executive of Auckland International Airport.

“We once had an elderly gentleman on medication. He was disoriented and of the view, ‘I want to get off the bus’. He was up and trying to open the door. He didn’t know where he was.

“So that’s balancing someone who’s clearly in distress, and how you support them … but also they’re causing stress for everybody around them who is watching.”

On this occasion, the passenger was coaxed back to his seat, and calmed by air crew with soothing words and a glass of water.

The point is that a team, in this case, of about 10 air crew can come together in a tiny, flying aluminum tube to deliver a safe outcome in an extremely stressful situation.

Hurihanganui’s experience in the air and subsequent leadership roles have given her grounding and perspective for a role that is never far from the public spotlight – dealing with upset passengers frustrated by delays in the international arrivals hall; airlines fuming about rising charges; or media demanding answers.

Part of any flight attendant’s skill is the ability to “read the room”, she says, identifying different situations each passenger might be facing as they come on board.

And as Auckland Airport prepares for its busiest days of the year – and a massive period of change in the next 12 months and beyond – the chief executive certainly seems to be reading the room.

Hurihanganui and I met for lunch on the first day of spring – a stunning Friday afternoon – at Esther on the ground floor of Auckland’s QT hotel.

She’d recently come through the airport’s annual results announcement – a creditable performance in which passenger numbers had risen 183 per cent following the end of the Covid pandemic. The company had doubled its annual revenue to $625.9 million and, at $148 million, beat its underlying earnings guidance by $48m.

We stayed on sparkling water for the duration of lunch, necessitated by the fact she was on duty, and might be called up at any time to handle an emergency.

“Most of my career has been in aviation, or the operational environment. There’s an acceptance that comes with that – at any given time, in a 24/7 environment, something could happen. So you’re accessible.”

She’s certainly had to front up in the last year on undue delays in the likes of the international arrivals hall, where in September, passengers were reportedly waiting an average half-hour to be processed – 10 minutes longer than pre-Covid times.

“Auckland Airport needs to manage their airport,” Board of Airline Representatives executive director Cath O’Brien said at the time. “They need to be the managers, the conductors of the orchestra of that airport.

“They need to get involved with queue management, get involved with making sure the flight screens have got live flight data displaying on them, get involved with gate allocation. We need for them to conduct the orchestra and it hasn’t really been what’s happening historically.”

In a video conference call two weeks ago, as a follow-up to our lunch, Hurihanganui said the delays in September had been “disappointing”, but there had been improvements.

“We’ve been working really hard to ramp up … as an ecosystem we’ve needed to get all the players in the system operating in sync.

“September showed us that we weren’t quite there on that but also, I think constraint breeds innovation. I’m really pleased with the work that we’ve been able to do with biosecurity.

“They’ve stepped up to the plate, they’re willing to change how they look at things – like [introducing] the Express Lane. We actually trialled that and that’s embedded nicely.

“I’ve certainly had pretty consistent feedback from people who have used it. And biosecurity has confirmed, they’ll have that in place for three peak periods each day.”

One floor above, in departures, aviation security has been working on updated rosters and more lanes to reflect passenger demand.

The airport has been preparing for its busiest days of the year this week and over the coming month. Flights and movements are back to 96 per cent of pre-Covid levels.

“I think we are fit for summer, but we won’t be taking our eyes off the ball, I can tell you that,” says Hurihanganui.

Originally from the United States and still boasting a refined midwestern accent, Hurihanganui spent 20 years at Air New Zealand, starting in that role as a flight attendant while she studied for her business degree.

She ended up as one of the airline’s top executives – chief operating officer – during a period of tumultuous change and challenges brought on by the pandemic.

“I’ve got a soft spot for aviation – you’re connecting people, whether it be going on holiday, or they’re launching a business and seeking funding in LA, or a funeral, or a marriage. There’s just so many examples of connecting people.”

Aviation, historically, might be regarded as a bit of an old boys club.

Hurihanganui makes the point during lunch that she has never worked directly for a female boss.

One of her missions is to help nurture and mentor future female leaders.

The number of female CEOs and leaders in NZX-listed companies and more generally, she says, is “abysmal”.

“Certainly through my roles, it’s something that I look at – getting to that 40-40-20 mix [40 per cent men, 40 per cent women, 20 per cent any gender].

“You absolutely pick the right people for the job. I’m not saying it’s a quota but with the likes of recruitment pipelines -and I’ve used examples of engineering – if you’re advertising for someone with 10 years’ experience for the role, then the only people who are going to fit that bill [are men].

“You’ve got to be willing to look differently at how you are recruiting.”

At Air New Zealand, she worked for a range of well-known CEOs, including Ralph Norris, Rob Fyfe, Christopher Luxon and Greg Foran.

She has learned from all of them, she says.

“They’re all very different. They talk about different leaders for different times. Ralph Norris came in and was a step change in terms of it being about people, not planes. The reinvestment programme started that transformation.”

That era of new planes, products and services – lie-flat beds and an overhaul of how the airline sold itself – was supercharged by Fyfe.

“I really enjoyed working with Rob stylistically – I liked it because it challenged me.

“It was probably Rob that really fast-tracked that customer-focus, brand perception. He did excellent work in that time and what I learned from him I probably still use today.

“He spent a lot of time on the ground. He would go to the engineering hangar and they had him cleaning toilets. He’d invest time. That’s something that I watched – and I observed the benefit of it.”

She says workers will always be more open “on their own turf”.

“They will talk to you more clearly than they will when they come to your office.

“You’re just going to get a different thing than if you were standing alongside them by the baggage belt or at the hangar. Rob did that well as a core tenet.”

She says she gets a lot of energy from watching how work is done, as opposed to how work is imagined. While there might be a textbook or instructions on how something is supposed to be done, this might not be the reality.

“Things get filtered… my observation for any CEO or COO [is that] unless you go looking, you’re only going to get told what people want to tell you.”

Luxon, she says, is different from Fyfe again.

“Rob was probably more introverted and needed to consciously put himself out there. Christopher is much more structured and more extroverted. So again, different leaders, different times.”

She says she and Luxon are similar in that they are both structured.

“Christopher is very, very focused on driving performance. There isn’t a lot of randomness. Christopher is very clear about what success looks like and what he needs to do to make that happen.”

There is one difference: Hurihanganui avoids the corporate speak that sometimes dominates Luxon’s dialogue (although he is improving quickly).

Looking back on the transcript of our lunch interview, I catch only one obvious example, when she speaks about the importance of flexibility for staff.

“I’m interested in outputs,” she says, which strikes me as something Luxon might say.

On the recommendation of the waitress at Esther, we share several plates, including oysters, puff bread, taramasalata, duck pappardelle and lamb soulvaki.

“Other than offal, I’m good!” says Hurihanganui when I inquire of any preferences.

Hurihanganui comes from midwestern America – Rockford, Illinois.

She and her two older brothers were raised in a very conservative environment.

“You get more reflective as you get older, I’ve realised.

“When I was growing up, my parents were very religious. We had a very strict upbringing that meant there were lots of things you couldn’t participate in. So as a kid growing up, I was different. You didn’t necessarily belong – there were things that you self-excluded from.”

She says the experience has helped her to understand other people’s positions.

“I think it brings an empathy because, at 11 and 12, kids are not particularly empathetic. When I was younger, I did not always feel fairly judged. It was great for nurturing discipline and independence but when you’re 12, you generally want to feel like you belong.”

From that, she says she has an understanding “or a curiosity, perhaps, to understand others before you judge”.

She once told BusinessDesk: “Empathy and popularity are two very, very different things. But you can bring empathy into any engagement. So even if you have a performance issue with someone, discussing it and understanding their perspective, their reality of how they’re thinking, generally allows you to have a more productive discussion, even if it’s a hard conversation.”

We discuss how she handles angry customers.

“The online environment is so nasty – I go back to my earlier comment about trying to understand where someone’s coming from; their back story.

“Sometimes I get some very aggressive emails or comments on LinkedIn posts. I would say nine times out of 10 – and I always feel very strongly about following up – when you reach out and engage, particularly if you’re talking and not via a keyboard, they’re nowhere near as aggressive.”

Hurihanganui came to New Zealand in 1989, as an 18-year-old. It was meant to be a short, six-week holiday, visiting a Rotorua friend who had been an exchange student in the US.

The planned holiday would be just the fillip ahead of her starting university in America.

She never left.

“There’s definitely a connection with New Zealand – I really enjoyed it from the get-go.”

She met the dashing Steve Hurihanganui, 10 years her senior.

“Rotorua is not very big. I’d seen him around town, a handsome young man. A week or so later I saw him again at a pub with some friends. He was there as well. We got to chatting and the rest is history, right?”

The couple have been an item ever since, with two boys, one 22, one eight.

“My dad got his first passport to come and see his grandson.”

She could take or leave living in the US again but she misses her family.

“I miss my folks, I do miss popping over on Sunday for a meal or a cup of tea or taking Mum to the doctor. You miss the small things rather than the big things but we’ve done all right over the years.”

Hurihanganui says she and her husband jokingly describe themselves as “active relaxers”.

“That usually means renovating, going hiking. We have a couple of dogs. A luxury is just to go for a two-hour walk on a Saturday, not to be anywhere.”

In downtime, she’ll play Lego or SpiderMan with her young son; her older son is a building apprentice.

Her own work day starts early – up by 4.45am for exercise, and then in the car by 7am. She strives to be home for dinner, and to put her young son to bed. Then she’ll log back on for any additional or tidy-up work.

“What I don’t do is send emails after hours. I’ll get it done because it works with my family and my schedule, but I’ll delay sending it until 8 o’clock the next day. My experience is that no matter how often you say, ‘I’m going to send you emails, but don’t feel like you have to respond to me’, it doesn’t work.

“If people get an email at nine o’clock at night, they are going to feel compelled that they should reply.

“My team also knows that if they do hear from me at 9 o’clock, it’s because it’s something critical and important and urgent, rather than just normal.”

Hurihanganui rejects criticism, mainly from airlines, that the airport is too focused on building retail experiences rather than its core aviation capabilities.

Auckland, she says, has spent $1.5 billion on aeronautical investment in the past decade, and about $950 million on non-aeronautical.

Regardless, she says, travellers want shopping experiences. Once they clear Customs and security, research shows, they finally relax – their holiday has started.

“Travellers want access to shopping as part of their experience. They want to be able to shop for handbags or go to a bar and have a glass of champagne.”

On Air New Zealand’s current CEO, Greg Foran, she says, “He’s a logic-based leader – I’m a logic-based leader”.

“So actually, we work well in the view of saying, we’ve got problems to solve – let’s solve them.

“But again if it comes to pricing, we have perspectives – we may have to agree to disagree.”

She says the airport’s relationship with the airline is operationally strong – meaning, she says, that the day-to-day relationship is fine.

“… and then you have pricing,” she says.

“In my 23 years in the industry, every five years when there’s a price-setting event, that tension comes to the fore.”

“We have an effective operational relationship right now – but you need to be able to sometimes be comfortable holding some incongruence at the same time.”

As the world takes to the skies again, there is something like $700 billion worth of development under way at airports across the globe.

Hurihanganui cites airports such as Narita, in Japan, and Changi, in Singapore, as two of the best in the world.

The likes of biometrics are now helping passenger flows at airports in China. As long as privacy issues are well worked through, she sees biometrics playing a huge role in future.

Auckland Airport will be back to around 96 per cent of its pre-Covid capacity this summer.

Aside from the “revenge travel bubble”, Hurihanganui believes there’s another factor at play. People realising that life is short, and that despite tough economic times, they want to get to a Formula One race, or see Greece.

She says she is an optimist herself.

“What’s important to me in life is the fundamentals. I have a lovely family. Everybody’s healthy; the kids are doing great. “

Professionally, she loves her role for the potential it offers to be able to help the New Zealand economy, trade and tourism.

“I’m always a glass half-full sort of girl. It does feel like the country has been in a bit of a funk – not a technical term!

“One of the things that appealed to me about New Zealand when I first came here was that there was a kind of pluckiness about it. A give-it-a-go, roll-up-your-sleeves attitude, an optimism.

“You couldn’t hold the country down for very long.

“Covid has been deep and significant, so I am not making light of that but I do feel we haven’t found our pluckiness coming out the other side. Not yet. I think it’s [a matter of] time. I do think it’s incumbent in leaders in New Zealand to play a role.”

She says that applies to the public and private sector. “We can spend a long time throwing rocks but then we don’t see the train coming down the tracks because we’re so busy chucking rocks.

“There is a need to get on and do it because otherwise you can ruminate and tread water for years. New Zealand’s facing plenty of examples and we’re kind of feeling the pain right now.

“It’s a matter of how do we break out of that and get into making the changes we want to see rather than talking about the change we want to see.”

One of the big changes – perhaps ‘outputs’ – she’s currently focused on is Auckland Airport’s massive redevelopment plans.

The Pullman hotel opened last week, and the first phase of a new $300 million transport hub will open by the end of the first quarter of 2024, just after Hurihanganui marks her second anniversary as chief executive.

The first phase of the transport hub is an undercover pick-up and drop-off zone at the international terminal. It will also allow for P60 parking for people wanting to farewell friends and family.

Its opening lays the groundwork for enabling work to start for a new domestic terminal to be built in the next five years, attached to the international terminal.

International passengers, families, friends and other customers have been having to trek past through makeshift, container-like pathways as the parking zone is being redeveloped – while it’s a burden, I ask her if people are forgiving, knowing that improvements are coming.

“There will be constant movements and things will open, things will close, things will be redirected,” she says.

The airport company has been doing a lot of “enabling” work until now.

“When you get into the construction proper, that’s going to be a really large footprint. Our focus is ensuring the customers are having an easy [experience] – they know where to go, they know what to do.

“I think that you get a level of reprieve when people know that something better [is on the way]. I think it gets even better when they see tangibles there.

“In the last 12 months, the public’s heard about ‘it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming’. They see lots of hoardings but they are not seeing the results of it. Certainly in the next 12 months, stages will start to be finished.”

The new transport hub will offer a much better undercover experience for pick-ups and drop-offs.

“The roads are improving and people will start to see that – I think that that gives us some credit in the bank, but, that being said, we have to deliver. We will always be judged on the last experience you have with us.

“You can have four great experiences – if your fifth experience is suboptimal, we’re going to be judged for that. We’re really conscious of that.”