Dear Oscar:
Unleash your employees to do good customer service. The Smisek era drove employees to tears, with customers not far behind, because of all the controls and restrictions and limitations placed on employee actions. "I'm sorry, we can't do that anymore," came the refrain, over and over -- especially during irrops.
Change that now. Give your employees their own heads when it comes to trying to do right by customers, and it will pay you back tenfold.
(Stop fighting distressed customers to the death over an $8 foot voucher, too. Stop claiming every delay and misconnect under the sun is due to "weather," so you can save $69 on a hotel voucher but possibly lose a $25k-per-year customer in the bargain. Just stop playing chess against the people who keep you in business.)
Treat your employees with the same suspicion and contempt they got from Smisek, and you'll stay stuck in the mud, and eventually you'll walk the same plank Jeff walked.
There's tons more to do to get this company off the scrap heap, much of it technical / operational and complicated, and some of it political and laborious, like labor deals. (It's ridiculous that you're still two virtual airlines that despise one another under one flag, after all these years.) But this is something you can do with the stroke of a pen on day one. Do it.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt for now,
BearX220