bocastephen

I think it’s more of a specific issue of airline managers who were trained by Baldanza wrecking havoc on the rest of the industry. Baldanza, like Lorenzo, should have been banned from the industry long ago.

BearX220

The industry has always suffered human wrecking balls (not just Baldanza and Lorenzo but Carl Icahn, Al Checchi at NW, maybe Stephen Wolf qualifies), so it's really not a Baldanza-specific phenomenon. Value destruction is a long-running way of life in commercial aviation, and so is the idiotic assumption among incompetent MBAs that the status quo you're currently enjoying will never change. Most business sectors run in cycles, predictable or not, that nonetheless never fail to shock the genius MBAs at the wheel.

Doug Parker's "AA will never lose money again" line is going to be in the first graf of his obit one day.

cmd320

This is perhaps my favorite quote by an airline executive in history as it perfectly summarizes just what an idiot he is.

manstein58

Think Oscar & Kirby had a conversation like this

UAL757222

At least it will finally be someone that doesn’t have ties to CO. Then again, he was with HP and US so who knows. Maybe the problems there were Doug Parker

uastarflyer

Is Tilton available? Someone to offset Kirby’s baser instincts.

PsiFighter37

Oscar remaining as Executive Chairman (and not non-executive) suggests that he will still have a material say in day-to-day matters. I would hope that he steers Kirby towards moves that gain market share and more flyer-friendly moves. My opinion is that before Kirby showed up, most of the announcements regarding UA tended to be a net positive.

UAL757222

I’d take Glenn back in a heart beat. Anyone to get that cancerous tumor off the tail of the planes and maybe start to look and feel like United again. Oh, and please get scumbag Gordon Buffoon’s name off of N78001. If you say UA is HIV Positive, you don’t deserve a plane.

Oh, and more new A320s and less 737s.

moondog

Delta already made the blue print; should be easy enough to copy it.

nerdbirdsjc

Nah, Tilton was too focused on merging/selling United to the exclusion of most everything else.

dinoscool3

A heck of a lot of rose colored glasses wearing going on here re: Tilton.

BearX220

United employee groups did not like Tilton and tried to undermine him. I will not forget riding a hotel-airport shuttle van with a UA crew the very day the UA-CO merger was operationalized, and they were positively burbling about how the CO genius Jeff Smisek was going to rescue the airline from that fool Tilton.

Then again, United employee groups also fought with Dick Ferris, Stephen Wolf, Jim Goodwin, Smisek eventually, and pretty much anyone who's tried to run the company since the '80s, so I'd venture at this point that it's pretty much unrunnable.

EWR764

Anyone longing for the days of Glenn Tilton either never lived through them or has no idea what they are talking about. Full stop.

uastarflyer

This then 1K got hooked up over and over again by Tilton. Empowered 1K agents on the phone or at the airport making things happen. Excellent compensation aka miles or $ETC when things went awry.

Premium and high status (and generally loyal) UAUA customers, some of them ling time FTers, may (likely?) have a different perspective than employee groups. I speak as only a customer.

In fairness, Oscar is also fine all things considered. He has some customer delight in his gene pool And obviously Tilton isn’t an option. The problem is Kirby, and before that, Smisek.

UAL757222

Tilton had the thankless job of taking over the airline post 9/11 and when they had zero choice but to reorganize. I remember distinctly employees not liking him because of many of the unpopular but necessary cuts that had to be made in order to save the airline. He didn’t sugar coat things and tell people what they wanted to hear, which is why he was unpopular. I feel for the employees who lost pensions and saw their pay reduced, but United is around today because of those sacrifices. And regardless of how the merger turned out, he was absolutely a visionary in knowing the industry needed it long before anyone else did.

What he and his team did do was know their bread and butter. Mileage Plus was absolutely a top notch FF program and UA made it easier to accrue your miles and made up for many of the necessary BK cuts by rewarding your loyalty to them during a turbulent time. And when things did hit the fan, there was generally a mea culpa from the airline and decisive action to make it right. Global Services was launched during his tenure, along with p.s and IPTE, which saw the launch of the first lie flat business class of any US airline. People can snicker all they want, UA’s premium seats were best in class among all of the US airlines when it was introduced. And for those that say everything else suffered, United didn’t have a single crash or plane write off during his tenure and things like their on-time performance, plane cleanliness, and plane refurbishments, took huge leaps between 2007-2010.

In addition to the BK, he had to deal with oil at $150/bb, terrorism, SARS, bird flu, Swine Flu, worst recession in 70 years, and still managed to keep UA flying when many (including Buffoon) said they wouldn’t.

Contrast that to Smisek and Oscar, who have had the benefit of cheap oil, less competition, & better economy and still manage to have a lack luster product and lag behind Delta, and you can see that Glenn is was able to make some lemonade with rotten lemons.