Originally Posted by
Vulcan
Say what you will about Larry, and I personally applaud him, but he LISTENED to his customers. How many other CEOs read their own email and then call the sender?
While Larry's responsiveness is to be commended, it's important to keep in mind that this is essentially part of CO's Customer Service arm. In the context that WE CARE routinely fails CO's customers, people are driven to write to the CEO or another exec.
How often does one actually feel the need or desire to write a company executive? A healthy organization has a working CS organization that is empowered to fix problems, and also collects, aggregates and reports data. There are plenty of examples of airlines and other industries doing just that without customers having to write the CEO.
While his responsiveness is to be applauded, it's also a testament to how poorly his CS organization is doing. If customers do not believe they can write in and have their concerns taken seriously, he should have worked to resolve that issue.
Originally Posted by
Vulcan
Yes, the DOs were great (We attended all four). If there is one thing I take from that, it is the people of CO. I did not meet one who did not like his/her job. They are happy people and would not be if Larry treated them poorly. Yse, the customer is first, but the employee dedication and loyalty is what makes CO a great airline.
How is an event like that representative of the employees? Obviously the customer-friendly ones are the ones who would want to work those events. Some bitter FA, or some shenanigans-pulling GA is not about to sign up for something like that. We never met anyone from WE-CARE at the DO's did we?
Originally Posted by
worldwidedreamer
I've always enjoyed flying with the airline the works hard and flies right.
I'm not sure I understand what the difference is. These days CO's main differentiator is a free sandwich, at least in Y.
Originally Posted by
RobS
You'd have to be a board member to know for sure, but I believe Kellner was "invited" to retire for a few good reasons: 1) disastrous handling of fuel hedging over a period of years, 2) failure to reach accommodation with the pilots on scope - thus the DH4's, 3) allowing Biz/First to lose its polish (and profitability), and 4) overpaying for LHR access.
Likely not a popular view on this board, but it's quite possible. From a FF perspective, many of the negative changes that were put into place during Larry's tenure have been reversed with this change. Plus you look at CO's current position w.r.t. the joint venture, vs. CO's previous protectionist attitude towards codeshares and multi-carrier itineraries, and a lot of these changes began to come to fruition just as Larry's departure was announced. It may be coincidence, it may not be. We'll likely never know.
Originally Posted by
grahampros
A very differant point seems to be missed in this debate. CO was at very differant point in its history and times in the history of the industry and needed very each differant leaders in each.
Gorden was the perfect inspirational leader needed at the time to save the carrier. That was done. In this enviorment since a hard nose business man who was focused on costs and maximizing revenues was the key to survial.
TWA, you seem to be moaning more about the lost industry that we will never see again, more than CO or it's the leadership. It's here to stay in the industry.
Larry was likely the right person at the right time to move CO through this last period. Now he has moved on to make more money. Few truely great exes want to stay in the airline industry anymore when you can make far more moeny in other industry's and i don't fault him for that.
While I agree with this rationale, but it would make more sense if CO didn't promote from within for the CEO positions. If they were looking for a CEO to do XYZ, theoretically they would recruit from the outside to find the right person, not take an existing executive and see if they'd make it as CEO.