Skift Take
Incoming CEO Craig Kreeger will be key to VA's growth and working with its new part-owner Delta, especially as Richard Branson focuses his energies elsewhere.
Sitting by the pool of the five-star Taj Mahal hotel in New Delhi, outgoing Virgin Atlantic boss Steve Ridgway seemed pretty relaxed.
In the late October afternoon sunshine, the outgoing chief executive of Virgin Atlantic was keen not to give too much away about who his successor might be. Talking to The Sunday Telegraph about the future of the airline beyond his retirement – he steps down after 23 years at the Sir Richard Branson-backed airline at the end of February – he said little more than that a “global search” was underway, and he hoped to be able to unveil his successor before Christmas.
As it was, it was just after Christmas – last Tuesday, January 8 to be precise – that Ridgway named his successor as the largely unknown Craig Kreeger .
Kreeger, who just last year was promoted to his current role as senior vice president, customer, at American Airlines, where he has worked since 1985, was not on many external short-lists.
Despite not being well known outside the industry, his experience in both the US and the UK, and his knowledge of American’s tie-up with Virgin’s bitter rival British Airways, appeared to clinch the deal.
With an American set to run the airline in which US-based Delta Airlines will, by the end of 2013, own a 49pc stake in, expert watchers are wondering if Virgin is in danger of losing its up-start British roots.
There were certainly other candidates, such as Julie Southern, Virgin’s chief commercial officer. Standing next to the Delta CEO, Richard Anderson, at a press conference in New York on December 11, she looked every inch the next Virgin Atlantic chief executive.
Having flown to the US to explain why having Delta as a new shareholder – the US airline is buying the stake from Singapore Airlines for $360m (£223m) – would help the airline, Southern impressed many in the audience and took most of the questions.
She was o
