Ouch...
I have been thinking about this...I guess the big problem might be he has not been able to get the internal UA vs. CO thing settled.
The cultures of the two companies are very different to start with. It seems to me that, like many sUA flyers here, sUA employees do not think sCO understand and can run an airline like UA. Whether it is true or the normal human resistence in this situation, it cannot be good for the company and a good leader would have overcome it by now.
The sUA side might be saying "we told you so" now but what are we going to do?
I don't follow the union stuff and from what other discussions here, I guess that is a big problem too.
Then I was thinking - how about the fact that CO was a great airline by many metrics? Then I realized...How much did Smisek have to do with it? He inherited it, right?
I guess it might be logical to say "let's cut and get the numbers OK before we start turning things around" but if you lose your best customers in the process...