American Airlines’ CEO Can’t Escape a Quote by Southwest Air’s Co-Founder
Photo Credit: American Airlines Group CEO Doug Parker is advising anyone who will listen to take "a leap of faith" to understand that the airline and the industry have fundamentally changed for the better, and that means that management has to change the way it leads. American Airlines Group
Skift Take
American Airlines Group CEO sounds as though he has turned into a labor activist. OK, not really, but he knows you can't have a successful company unless its corporate culture is healthy and its employees have a real stake in its well-being.
Over the years, Doug Parker's employees at AmericaWest, US Airways, and recently the American Airlines Group kept sending him a quote from Herb Kelleher, the legendary co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines.
"Happy employees take care of customers and happy customers take care of the shareholders by coming back," was Kelleher's quote (or something roughly equivalent to that).
"I will tell you that quote, I've seen it more than anyone because I would have employees send it to me all that time," Parker, chairman and CEO of the American Airlines Group said March 8 at the J.P. Morgan Aviation, Transportation and Industrials Conference in New York City. "When I first started getting it I would say, 'Yeah, it's easy for Herb to say because he's paying people less than we are. So therefore he's keeping them happy because he knows he has to. The way he's really taking care of his shareholders is h
