American Airlines Reshapes Management - What This Means

American Airlines Reshapes Management - What This Means

American Airlines has some changes coming to its management. The following changes are incoming:

• CSO, Steve Johnson, is entering retirement - nothing new, this was announced months ago.

• Executive Vice President of American Eagle, corporate real estate, and government affairs, Nate Gatten, is moving to Apple for a better job.

• Executive Vice President of communications and marketing and chief communications officer, Ron DeFeo, is leaving in March.

• Senior Vice President of tech ops, Kevin Brickner, is retiring after a 30-year tenure.

What this means is very complex, but the basics are that people who should be in charge and seem to have a proper vision are getting more power. Chief Commercial Officer, Nat Pieper, is adding marketing, brand, advertising, and partnerships as responsibilities. This changes indirectly how customer experience budgeting will work. Chief Customer Officer, Heather Garboden, will only report to Nat Pieper; Nat Pieper has advertised a premium experience for customers as his image, allowing Garboden to accomplish more.

Former Spirit Chief Operating Officer John Bendoraitis joins American to lead technical operations. This should help American Airlines’ competitively unreliable arrival accuracy rate. Chief People Officer Cole Brown’s HR organization adds employee recognition and engagement; this should help one of the company’s weak spots. There are many other changes, but nothing else should make a difference for consumers.

To summarize, these changes are great for American Airlines as they attempt to get competitively stronger. Management seems to be moving in the right direction.