Catbert10

My guess is that Kirby realized that he wasn't going to advance at AA any time soon and negotiated with UA. Once he agreed in principle to going to UA and AA found out, AA asked him to leave immediately precisely because of the conflict of interest.

CPRich

Because waiting on the tarmac for 15 minutes obviously indicates the airline is a complete failure and senior executives must have been fired because of it!!!!

cmd320

I'm not sure I understand the thinking at United here. They hired a great guy as CEO who's finally turning around what was a complete mess of an airline ever since the merger with CO, and then they go and bring on an idiot like Kirby? Clearly they still haven't learned their lesson from the Smisek era.

This is likely 100% a good thing for AA. One down, one to go, though it's going to be a tough one.

no1cub17

Hey on the bright side - think about how in shape all the UA folks will be once they get used to running from C30 to F27 in 35 minutes on a biweekly basis. Hope they're going to spray Terminals 1-2 with some powerful deodorant!

rjw242

Hyperbole aside, falling to dead last in on-time rankings (after months of systemic, uncorrected operational failures) seems like a perfectly legitimate reason to clean house.

JonNYC

I agree 100%

Dallas49er

I feel Mr. Parker, and his merry crew, have a "track record" similar to that of any middle and senior "leaders" * in the financial services industry (Merrill, Morgan, Goldman, et al.) where I have spent the last 40 years.

They have perfected the fine arts of consistantly delivering failure or mediocre success-coupled with a Machievellian skill at eliminating all those with any talent, skill, and expertise who stand in the way of their march to the Corporate Suite. I bear no animus towards Mr. Parker, but I feel he is no better or worse than anyone else.

Gordon Bethune, C. R. Smith, etc., where are you now?

* Exceptions- Larry Fink at BlackRock, John Bogle at Vanguard, and perhaps 1 or two others who don't immeadiately come to mind.)

24left

Just saw this

"What If American Was Telling the Truth in Their Press Release Firing Scott Kirby?"

by Gary Leff on August 30, 2016

http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea....g-scott-kirby/

ijgordon

An employment lawyer can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it would be unusual to put a noncompete in a termination (or employment) agreement if the employee ends up being involuntarily terminated, which, as far as we can tell, is what happened here. Certainly not without even more extraordinary compensation. And that's besides the fact that noncompetes are unenforceable in many states (not sure about Texas, and not sure if Texas or Illinois law would ultimately matter).

The termination agreement does contain standard confidentiality clauses, and it does have a non-solicitation (but he can hire anybody that AA fires).

I also have a feeling--although we're venturing into speculation --that Kirby knew he was getting the boot, reached out to UA confidentially (i.e., AA didn't know about it), negotiated his severance with AA, and then just before he signed the agreement yesterday and just before his departure was made public (or was it immediately thereafter?), dropped the news about UA.

AAerSTL

Idiot? Put your emotional dislike for the individual aside, he is laughing his way to the bank. You or I could only dream of getting such an opportunity and a financial windfall to separate from a job and immediately land in the #2 role at a competitor. UA in a way has much of the same issues AA had five years or so ago their costs are uncompetitively high and they aren't enjoying the revenue premium they've historically been able to receive. I'm not saying he is some airline genius whiz guy, often times executives like this get where they are simply by nature of good luck, people they know and being in the right place at the right time. No doubt there are probably dozens of other qualified individuals they could tap who could do an equally good job, but this is the way the world and corporate America works.

C17PSGR

Be careful on urban legends ... noncompetes are very typical in high end severance agreements. With the exception of California and North Dakota (and a couple of other states with unique twists), properly drafted non-competes are regularly enforced.

Not familiar, of course, with Kirby's situation.

LDVFlyer

That's not the only thing he bungled. He was outsmarted by Delta at LAX.

cmd320

I couldn't care less about his personal achievements, I wouldn't personally even let him run a Starbucks branch.That isn't the point. The problem here is that United is actually on a positive trend at the moment and Kirby will immediately find a way to end that and turn it into a complete operational disaster as he and Doug have successfully done with AA.

JonNYC

That Starbucks branch manager (as in, just any random one) would likely have equal ->better insights into this/ the airline business in general than most of those being posted in this thread.

cmd320

Or anyone running AA for that matter.