I wonder what Alan Joyces business partners from fundamental islamic nations think about his campaigning. Or worse the radicals in that country. Its also rather hypocritical for Joyce to conduct business with the national airline of a country that crimiinalises homesexuality, but bans a guy for throwing a pie in his face.
I see this as very different things.
EK is doing business with QF (and vice versa). Just as much as QF is not any one person (eg: Joyce as the CEO) neither is EK going to represent the nation it serves (yes, I know it is Government owned by the ruling family).. putting EK to one side for the moment, the agreement is between them and QF, not them and EK.. Their opinion of the CEO and his private life are, one would hope, irrelevant. In fact, I think there would be mass outrage if a company refused to do business with another because of the views or opinions of a leader of that company (and also note that QF's Board are the final word on such far ranging ventures). It's not Joyce personally doing business with EK, it is the company he runs as CEO that is and his part in alliance decisions would be, one would hope, made on purely Business grounds (and again, he is not the sole voice).
On the other hand, the pie thrower made a *personal and planned attack* on Alan Joyce specifically for his private life and views (heck, he wasn't even talking about SSM issues at the breakfast function in question).
In sports parlance he "went the man and not the ball" (and yes, that is a deliberate pun for those seeking it
)
and AJ did not personally ban the pie-face but the official word was that the action was considered as an assault on an employee of QF (and at that breakfast he was speaking as QF CEO, not as Alan Joyce private citizen, so he was there in a work role) and thus the man was banned from QF as you would imagine anyone assaulting a member of flight or ground crew would be too.
the direct correlation there to the earlier comment about Alan Joyce doing business with EK would be specifically for him to say he refuses to do business with EK because of the policies of the UAE.
One is Business, and one was very personal.
I don't see how there is anything hypocritical here.