A new Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) documentary titled ‘Grounded’ will air across the Nine Network on 5 January – and we have a sneak peek (so keep reading!).
Branded ‘A Story of Survival’, the Flight Centre film focuses on the impact of Covid-19 on the travel advisor group and how the business and its people responded to the devastation caused by the pandemic.
As told by some of the people who were integral to the response plans, “this documentary celebrates how a strong culture of ownership, egalitarianism and irreverence became the compass as they navigated an industry in crisis”, FCTG said on LinkedIn.
“When the world stopped in March 2020, Flight Centre Travel Group was a business on its knees, in an industry grounded.”
In a trailer of the film, Flight Centre Global chief financial officer Adam Campbell outlines the enormity of the challenge the group faced during the pandemic.
“So pre-Covid, our cost base was $225 million a month; we needed our net cash outflows every month to be $65 million or less,” he explains. “That’s less than a third of your previous cost base.”
During the trailer, news reports detail how FCTG was forced to close countless stores and cut 6,000 jobs worldwide.
“The impact that had on everybody that was in the business, and of course everybody that had to move on, was just something that you never could have predicted or estimated,” Flight Centre Americas managing director Charlene Leiss says.
“It really was life-changing, that whole experience.”
Skroo opens up
In the documentary, Flight Centre co-founder and chief executive officer Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner expresses his grave concerns for the group.
“What if we’re not going to be able to raise the money? So, there probably were a few weeks, where I thought, ‘Yeah, okay, this might be the end for the business’,” Turner says.
Fortunately, as it transpired, it was far from the end. In the last 12 months, Flight Centre stores have reopened, recruited new staff, and are as busy as ever.
The documentary was produced by In Three Production and Luke Wheatley, who was the former head of creative and content at FCTG.
Who were Flight Centre’s customers last year and which destinations were the most popular in 2022?
