What Happens to America’s Best Airlines When Their CEOs Leave?
Photo Credit: Delta and United's CEOs are two most of the powerful executives in the airline industry. Skift
Skift Take
The best airlines in America are also the most personality-dependent. The premium era is flattering both boards into thinking succession is a problem for later. It isn’t.
Connecting the Dots
Rafat Ali on what’s really shaping travel — and why it matters.The Skift team has been tracking what is now the densest period of airline CEO turnover in recent memory, with more than a dozen changes across several continents since November.
Willie Walsh leaving IATA for IndiGo; Campbell Wilson has been pushed out at Air India; Michael Rousseau forced to retire at Air Canada; Steven Greenway stepping down at flyadeal; Qatar on its third CEO in two years; Tim Clark still not-quite-retiring at Emirates. We’ve also covered the global forces driving all of it.
But the more I looked at the patterns, the more I kept coming back to the U.S., where the most interesting version of this story is playing out in real time, with real money attached.
Two U.S. airlines with total identity clarity run by dominant personalities. One airline in a strategic identity crisis so deep its own employees are in open revolt. And several others at various stages of discovering what happens after the personality leaves. Together, i
