The Chairman’s Flight That Got United’s CEO Fired
Photo Credit: A restaurant and people mover at Terminal C at Newark Liberty International Airport. Flickr / Mitch Altman
Skift Take
That Smisek would go, effective immediately, based on the curious Federal case of the Chairman's Flight and not the botched United-Continental merger speaks volumes about the state of U.S. aviation.
United Continental Holdings announced the abrupt departure of its CEO Jeff Smisek yesterday along with two other officials.
The announcement came on a day that United suffered technical issues, this time with the recently updated United.com, which failed and forced the airline to tell travelers to use its mobile site only for check-ins and reservations. Considering United's long history of failing to fix its technology woes, following its merger with Continental in 2010, one wouldn't have been way off base to think that this latest failure finally forced the board to drop Smisek as CEO in a straw-that-broke-the-camel's back moment.
But no.
Buried at the end of the press release announcing new CEO Oscar Munoz, a United Continental board member who was president and chief operating officer at rail operator CSX, was this note:
The departures announced today are in connection with the company’s previously disclosed internal investigation related to the federal investigation
