[2] In 1993, he attended an executive education program at Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, while he was working for American Airlines.
In 2019 Álex Cruz de Llano oversaw the successful beginning of a UK air service to Pakistan, making it the first Western airline in the country for ten years.
[8] In April 2020, during the global collapse in air travel brought along by the COVID-19 pandemic, he told British Airways' staff that he had set out plans to make up to 12,000 of them redundant.
Unite the Union decried the move as "heartless", saying "to reject government support but then expect their own staff to pay the cost... is irresponsible, dangerous and destructive".
There was a transition period in which he remained as non-executive chairman at British Airways[11] in the run-up to Doyle also taking over that role in April 2021.