Originally Posted by 8802

In what world was Vasu a scapegoat? He's taking the lion's share of the blame, but the man was the CCO, it wasn't like they canned a low-level manager.

Sure, he wasn't the only one making bad calls but moving past his "sun belt strategy" and "our product is our network" has been a welcome relief. The sales strategy that hamstrung us was his brainchild. He wanted to be a disruptor to an industry that is stodgy and established (corporate travel) and failed.

People engage in the same revisionist history with Kirby. Sure, he's trying to be Juan Trippe 2.0 at United, but when he was at AW/US/AA, he was all about RJ's, shrinking mainline, and keeping our pay low.

Originally Posted by JulesWinfield

The issue is that everyone above Vasu (Isom and the board) ultimately signed off on these decisions, and they are still here.

Originally Posted by Name User

Vasu also brought on our expansion into eastern European markets as well. He made a huge push for adding destinations out of hubs and successfully beat Spirit down in DFW as well.

He was really only wrong about one thing - getting rid of the booking systems corporate agents use. And he wasn't even wrong - it needs and will be done - he was just early. Which is the same as being wrong most cases. We pushed $2b in revenue to DL and UA as the post-covid upswing was happening.

I agree about Kirby - he was pushing for 99 seat RJs his entire tenure here. UA had a severely underutilized route network that Smisek had floundered, Kirby just used his AA rolodex game plan, took what he learned here and applied it there. He's a smart guy but still a dick.