John E. Jackson is the first non-Korean to lead Korean Air’s North American marketing and sales. After entering the U.S. market in the 1970s, Korea Air has become the world’s largest international air cargo carrier and flies to more American cities than any other Asian airline. Jackson admits he feels “some pressure” in his unique position, but things appear to be headed in the right direction for the airline. North American flights rang up sales growth of 20 percent and business-class seats on transpacific flights showed a 50 percent gain from last year. For the first time, Korean Air was named “best business class” for Asia in a 2006 passenger survey conducted by Business Traveler magazine.
Jackson, 42, hails from an airline family. His father was in marketing and his mother was a flight attendant for Delta Airlines, which is where Jackson worked in planning and maintenance scheduling before joining Korean Air in 1995. He routinely makes trips to Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo and other Asian cities to work with the home office staff in charting routes and building the airline. Jackson, who speaks conversational Korean, has worked to bridge the cultural gap between his Seoul-based company. While there are some basic cultural differences, he says, the real keys are the differences in the markets.
Question: You are one of the highest-ranking Americans in Korean Air, and for that matter at any foreign airline. What does that say about your company and what does it mean to you?
Answer:
I do feel a little weight on my shoulders, but I think it’s important to have someone with a local perspective because business here is different than in South Korea. I think it shows a lot about the strides that this company has made in reaching our goal of becoming a truly global airline. We want to be not just a Korean airline, but instead an airline that happens to be headquartered in Korea. We are making a concerted effort to localize our operations in all the markets that we fly to and the American region just happens to be the first where we’ve done this. If this is successful, we’ll roll it out to Europe and to China and to Southeast Asia.
Q: You must be a believer in the system, since it seems to have worked out for you and the airline.
A:
We’ve always been very successful in our core market, which is still the Korean market. And we’ve been successful in some of the other ethnic markets, whether it’s Chinese or Japanese or Filipino. But the real opportunity in this country is the non-ethnic market, which really means the business travel market. We’d made attempts to tap into those markets with some success, but not a lot of rapid growth like we really wanted to see. When you have someone who knows the market, but who knows the culture as well, you can make much quicker strides.
Q: Has is been difficult for you as a foreigner to fit in?
A:
Not really. You’re always going to face cultural issues. And it’s not just me facing them. It’s the people that I work with facing them. I guess some people are more comfortable than others in cultures other than their own. Most of the people that I work with here, if they weren’t born here, moved here at an early age. I’ve got a number of people who can point me in the right direction and keep me from making those cultural faux pas that you always hear about.
Q: With all the different countries the airline services, you must face even more cultural issues.
A:
Just different approaches to problem-solving, approaches to market development. You know the Korean market and the Chinese markets I’m talking about passengers and selling practices are very different than American.
Q: How do cultural differences affect the various markets?
A:
Just in terms of what they’re looking for, and that’s more a market than cultural issue. If you’re a Filipino, for example, you’re probably returning home to see your family for Easter or something like that. You’re looking for a certain product, meaning price, because you’re traveling with a family and it gets expensive. But if you are a business traveler who is trying to go to China to get a deal through and then turn around and go to Germany, you’re looking for convenience of schedule. You’re also looking for a restful flight experience. You’re looking for a number of things that will help you do your job. Those are some of the different approaches that you have to take.
Q: Many Americans remember when a Korean Air flight was shot down by the Soviets in 1983 with 269 passengers and crew aboard, all of whom perished. To what extent does the legacy of that tragedy remain a part of life at Korean Air?
A:
Not at all. The legacy of that tragedy is not a part of the life of Korean Air, probably because most of the people who were working for Korean Air at that time have long since retired and long ago we chose to move on and look forward. Korean Air has learned from its history but certainly, its legacy is to create for travelers the warmth and acceptance that’s a part of Korean heritage. Any incident that happened over 20 years ago is not relevant in today’s airline market and certainly not something that we want to dwell on.
Q: In the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, Korean Air had safety problems. The U.S. State Department warned travelers to avoid it and the FAA even threatened to ban it from U.S. airports. How did the company turn around its performance and image?
A:
Korean Air is constantly making improvements and working to be the best Trans-Pacific carrier out of L.A. It’s won numerous awards for its service. Korean Air is as safe an airline as the best of the best and in fact, there have been no safety issues with Korean Air this century. The airline won Air Transport World’s Phoenix Award in 2004 for its turnaround, and that’s three years ago. The safety issues are of no historical or passenger significance at this juncture. That was a different airline at a different time in history and now that we’ve overcome our challenges. We’e not answering the echoes.
Q: How did you get involved with Korean Airlines?
A:
I joined in 1995 and started in our Atlanta office. I’m from Atlanta originally. I worked in the Atlanta, Denver and Los Angeles offices for four years. I left in 1999 and then got into the publishing business and was recruited back after about six years away.
Q: What kind of publishing were you involved with?
A:
It was a travel magazine. I was responsible, only because I worked for Korean Air, for the Asia Pacific regional sales. So I spent quite a bit of time there. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the cultural sensitivities and that sort of thing.
Q: This seems to be very much a period of expansion for Korean Air. Why now?
A:
We’ve had a very forward-looking management that realized that to be successful in this industry you cannot just look at your own market. We’ve been fortunate to know that there’s a strong demand for business travel between North America and Asia. We understand that to satisfy those customers you have to give them convenience and frequent flights from many cities that they fly from to the cities that they’ve flying to.
Q: How does L.A. play into that?
A:
Los Angeles is going to be a key part of our growth. We’ll probably add 10 percent capacity to Los Angeles this year. We’ve got 300 employees in Los Angeles, so it’s quite an operation to begin with. In the U.S. and Canada combined, there are probably about 500 employees. The bulk of it is here in L.A.
Q: It sounds as if L.A. has special significance for the airline.
A:
Los Angeles alone has well over half a million Koreans living here and it’s the largest group of Koreans outside of Korea. We operate three flights a day, two nonstop, one via Tokyo. And then four times a week we operate a third flight non-stop between L.A. and Seoul.
Q: China is a major focus of Korean Air, too. Where does that initiative stand?
A:
We currently fly to 20 cities in China and within three years, we’ll probably serve 32 cities. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Transportation has allowed only seven new weekly frequencies to China. That’s it. There’s not enough capacity as it is to serve those two markets. It’s almost like a gold rush. Whoever wins that knows it will be a very profitable route for them.
Q: You’re married and have a family. What do they think of Korea?
A:
I have two kids, 9 and 7 years old, and they love it. When I was there last year, we took an extended vacation and we traveled around Korea. First of all, they were the center of attention because they were among the few non-Koreans everywhere we went. And my daughter has this blond hair that is about as blond as you can get. People would come up to them on trains and touch their cheeks and stuff like that. They loved it.
John E. Jackson
Title:
Director of Passenger Marketing and Sales, American Regional Headquarters
Company:
Korean Air
Born:
Atlanta, 1964
Education:
University of Georgia, business administration; University of Denver School of Law and Warwick University (United Kingdom), Graduate School of Business
Career Turning Point:
Joining Delta Airlines just out of college to do maintenance scheduling
Most Influential Person:
His father
Personal:
Lives in Valencia with his wife and two children