My personal take on Forarno is that he was available and had airline experience. He also has like half a degree of separation since he is prior AirTran.
One of the big (and quite true) Elliott critiques of the BOD is that they had no airline experience. I imagine that this was an attempt to get a friendly face on the board who meets the wickets that will keep Elliott at bay.
I view his addition as a net positive. The current BOD is awful. They are hand picked by Gary Kelly to rubber stamp his decisions and bring nothing other than a resumé of failure to the table.