I received the book last week after pre-ordering on Amazon and plowed through it in about 2 sittings. A really lightweight, corporate-victory-lap type of read, but entertaining for a fan of United. Plus, some inspiring anecdotes from Oscar's life make it worthwhile, but nothing particularly profound or Earth-shattering.

A few things stood out, though.

1) Oscar came to this country with his grandmother as an undocumented immigrant, and only became a naturalized US Citizen some time after marrying his wife. I did not know this before.
2) Oscar was brought onto the CO Board of Directors by Gordon Bethune in 2004 not long before he left the company, has a great deal of respect for him and considers him a friend. But, he stood in the way of PAR/Altimeter, which wanted to insert Bethune on the BOD during the 2016 proxy fight, and personally appealed to Gordon to withdraw himself from consideration. Oscar knew that Gordon joining the UAL BOD would drive a wedge between CO/UA employee groups, a gap he worked very hard to bridge.
3) Oscar acknowledged that many of the merger problems were related to the inability of CO processes and procedures to scale up to a larger airline like the merged United.
4) He credits much of his success during the 2016 proxy fight to the pilots (Todd Insler) and FA (Sara Nelson) unions coming out in support of him and management. Interestingly, Todd Insler is now generally viewed as persona non grata among the pilots for leading the negotiations toward what was generally seen to be a poor TA last year, and cost him a shot to be the national ALPA president.
5) Oscar talks about connectivity as key to United's growth strategy: linking small markets with larger ones, with premium cabins, over strengthened hubs. While I don't think that strategy has fundamentally changed, and external factors militate against it at the moment, it is nevertheless ironic reading about this in 2023, from a book written during 2022, as United-coded service has or will soon end to about three dozen smaller airports in the US.
6) He does not mention Jeff Smisek or any past management by name, which was a classy move, but it is clear the BOD was looking to move on from him before the PANYNJ controversy, due to underperformance, and the federal investigation simply made it imperative.
7) In his discussion of the Dao incident, he refers to the operating carrier of Flight 3411 as ExpressJet. As we know, it was Republic, but I wonder if XJT is included simply because it is now defunct, and Republic remains a key UAX partner. The wind-down of XJT operations was particularly acrimonious and led to litigation that is only recently resolved.
8) Oscar was planning to bring Kirby on before the PAR/Altimeter proxy fight.
8) Finally... his heart attack came very, very close to killing him. A few fortuitous happenings saved his life: a quick 911 call before he lost consciousness, a nearby ambulance crew with modern ALS equipment and telemetry, access to a top-tier hospital/staff and timely sourcing a good donor heart. His recovery at all, let alone the level of activity to which he has returned post-transplant, is truly nothing short of miraculous.