John Fitzgerald, commercial manager, Avro
Education: 5 GCE O’levels.
First travel job: junior trainee with British Airways.
Career path: John spent 17 years with BA where he worked his way up from junior trainee to tours development superintendent. In 1980 he moved to Cathay Pacific as sales and marketing manager and he held this position for 12 years. A brief spell with Dan Air as director of sales for Uk and Ireland was followed by three-and-a-half years with Air New Zealand as marketing manager UK/Scandinavia. Prior to joining Avro, John also held marketing positions within Debonair and Leisure Direction. He joined Avro in March 1998 as manager of scheduled services and in November 1998 took on the role of commercial manager while still maintaining the responsibility for scheduled projects.
Training: various British Airways in-house management training courses covering negotiating skills, advance fares and tariffs. While he was with Cathay Pacific he also attended in-house management training courses covering negotiating, targeting the customer, practical sales and management and key result area training. He also attended a two-month residential Swire Management course at INSEAD in Fontainbleau in 1990.
Advice for people wishing to develop a career in travel: “To succeed in any competitive area you need to be single minded and persistent – never give up. Many failures are people who did not realise just how close they were to success when they gave up.”