Shaping the inflight experience from every angle

What first drew you to aviation?

Growing up in Quebec City, I loved visiting the airport whenever my father travelled for work. Simply watching the planes come and go fascinated me. Years later, while studying mechanical engineering at university, I saw an advertisement recruiting summer cabin crew. It was only meant to be a seasonal job, but it became my entry point into aviation.

How did your career evolve from there?

Working on board made me realise how many people and systems come together to create the inflight experience. After university, I took a job as a cabin engineer, looking after the aircraft interiors, and later earned an advanced diploma in transportation equipment design, which led me into product design. Instead of executing an existing direction, I was now helping to define the vision, strategy and experience.

What brought you to Cathay Pacific?

My wife and I had always wanted to live abroad, so when the opportunity to join Cathay Pacific came up in 2019, it felt like a perfect fit. I started as the Customer Experience Manager for Premium Cabins, looking after First class and Business class, before moving into my current role, where I oversee all cabins.

How do you usually describe your job?

I usually say I ensure the design of the physical inflight environment delivers on our brand promise. Airlines fly similar aircraft, but what makes each airline unique is what passengers experience during the journeys. My team looks after the cabin interiors and onboard products across all cabin classes, from Economy through to First. We're responsible for anything that passengers can touch and interact with on board that remains attached to the aircraft. So, while we don't oversee dining or inflight entertainment, things like seats, storage, lighting and tray tables are all part of our remit.

How have your earlier roles shaped your approach?

They give me what I call a 360-degree perspective. While our passengers are central to everything we do, I never forget that our cabin crew must operate every product, and our engineers must maintain it. The perfect product balances everyone's needs: it exceeds our passengers' expectations while remaining easy to operate and maintain. Once we introduce a product on board, people will interact with it every day for years, so beautiful design alone isn't enough. It has to work well for everyone who uses it.

How do you translate customer feedback into better products?

Whenever we develop a new product or experience, customer feedback plays a major role in shaping our decisions. We monitor passenger surveys, social media, discussion forums and reviews, as well as engage with customers face to face, to understand how our current products are performing. When we're developing something new, we also use focus groups and prototypes to test ideas before they enter service.

A recent example involved our Airbus A321neo fleet. Customer feedback made it clear that we needed to create more space in Economy. As a result, we removed seven seats. From a commercial perspective, that's fewer seats available for sale, but we believed creating a better customer experience was the right decision in the long term.