United Airlines mostly got a pass in the media for its operational performance following the CrowdStrike outage, but they performed far worse than Southwest and American.
Delta absolutely melted down, and while employees and customers were dealing with the aftermath their CEO took off for Paris.
United’s CEO appears to have gone on vacation, too. Scott Kirby told employees and customers that he and his family were traveling through the worst of the cancellations this past Saturday with a connection in Denver.
What he didn’t say is they were headed off to Liberia, Costa Rica, where he was greeted by the station manager who shared photos to LinkedIn.
A United Airlines spokesperson confirms the destination, and suggests that Kirby was no longer needed to lead the carrier’s recovery the day after the outage began.
By Saturday morning, our technology was stable and our operation was recovering. The speed of our recovery is a testament to our strong teams and leaders in digital technology and operations. As we shared on Monday, Scott was able to see our operation first-hand in Denver on Saturday and stayed in close contact with our other senior leaders throughout our recovery.
United’s Denver – Liberia flight departs at 10:11 a.m. local time. He was connecting through Denver, so his travels originated much earlier than that. He was enroute out of the country from the very start of Saturday.
And while their IT may have been up and running, the airline still cancelled nearly 10% of flights even the next day after Kirby traveled – and delayed a further 26% of flights. That was better than their Saturday performance. And Kirby left the country with his family as employees and customers were still reeling from the mess.
At least during this meltdown he didn’t eschew his own operations to fly private like last year.
Do these jerks truly not comprehend the basics of leadership? Oscar would never have done this.
Tone. Deaf.
And, whodaphook goes to CR in the middle of July?!???
Why the weird American fetishization of optics over substance? The CEO isn’t the executive primarily respobsible for tech (CTO) or operations (COO). He can receive updates on those items while tending to other duties (or taking some PTO).
If anyone flies United, just talk to attendants or check-in agents about Kirby. They will tell you how horrible he is. The employees really missed Gordon Bethune, Larry Kellner, Oscar. They said even Jeff Smisek was better. They can’t wait for Kirby to disappear forever.
@Christian … There are no “basics for leadership” . A leader is simply a natural leader , who is someone the others have confidence in ability and judgement . In the military , a natural leader could be of any rank ; and an unnatural non-leader also could have been of any rank . I have read about Special Forces SOG teams wherein a second-ranking member was a PFC and a third-ranking member was a lieutenant . If anything had happened to the first-ranking member , the PFC would have assumed leadership . And Oscar did not handle the Dr. Dao matter very well at the beginning.
@ Gary — How many pounds of makeup is Kirby wearing in that headline picture?
@Gene, I think Scotty came from a drag show held before his headshot.
The question is this: Were the issues occurring with the operation part of the “known” recovery – meaning part of the plan to get back on track (which UA arguably did pretty quickly)? Or is this like Ed Bastian who leaves while the company still can’t figure out how to right the ship?
Plan in place and executing is one thing (just another person to stand around wringing hands, I guess). “Hey Mayor Pete, we got this. Peace out!” is another while the ship is still flooding and you can’t find some of the holes is another.
Well I never led people but I have been around long enough to know good leadership when it appears. It comes from those who are with the people who they want to accomplish things, encouraging them as needed. In other words, they may help others to be their best and don’t try to dominate or be separate from them. Gandhi put it well when he said, “A sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have but how many leaders you create.” Compare that with CEOs or politicians who always have to be at the center of things and want to show they are important by trying to control others. And to walk away in a crisis…even if you can’t do anything about it, not being there when others are struggling with a very bad situation, that is terrible leadership.
Who goes to Costa Rica in July?
PREMIUM
Wise man escape the chaos who wants to deal with that head on
all that noise around the edges from those fake frustrated customers
Go to southwest if you don’t like us
Oh, so he was supposed to stick around for a photo op and some PR, getting in the way of the people actually doing the work to try to fix things? What exactly do you think the CEO would be doing to help an IT glitch? It’s ridiculous that you people think optics and keeping up appearances matters at all. It doesn’t.
Isom is looking pretty good right now, why Kirby got kicked to the crub-bie at AA.
@Gary, you sure he was connecting? He does have a house in Denver, as we all learned in last years meltdown.
His other house is in Chicago so would also be odd for him to not take the direct from ORD unless it was cancelled…
@HeathrowGuy, I tend to agree with you. Whether he’s in Chicago, Denver or San Jose, he’s not personally fixing a tech or operations mess. He’s able to be in regular contact with the people who are competent to do that, and keeping a promise to his family. Not that I think he’s a great CEO or anything, but I’m not automatically condemning him on this one.
When did taking a vacation become a crime?
So many armchair quarterbacks on here. He’s a strong leader. Maybe not perfect but he lets his staff do their jobs and the execute. If you don’t like his style go fly Delta. Oh wait they are the most crippled and inept at handling irregularities.
There are the optics to United’s passengers and the optics to the United workforce. In this case I do think it matters. Is Kirby literally doing IT? Of course not. Yet it does not build morale when the leader leaves the dumpster fire for the team to put out.
@FNT Delta Diamond “Who goes to Costa Rica in July?”
My guess is people who understand the weather and number of visitors from what I found at costa-rica-guide (there is a mini dry season).
I’ve never been.
@Alert – If leadership is something you either have or don’t have, why does the Army OCS train people to be leaders through courses such as Basic Officer Leadership Course? Leadership is an ability. Some people have more and some less, same as an innate ability to learn foreign languages or do math. And Kirby ain’t got it. Leadership means, among other things, accepting blame. Oscar did that. Please list the times Kirby has done so.
Oh no fatty has another sad a out United. Who would have e guessed?
How good are Kirby’s IT skills?
Through me in with those who think, “who cares?” If there is nothing you can do to better the situation by staying, why stay? I understand it is bad optics. The US President is playing golf in Maryland while, say, Texas is being hit by a hurricane. So what? Are they supposed to be there filling sandbags? But, if you are not a supporter, such behavior is egregious.
The CEO’s are a bunch of greedy people. How about they do something for their employees. Richard Branson for Virgin Atlantic learned happy employees happy customer.
American greed is pure corruption and filling their own pockets no matter what even if they can get away with it.
@Andy – he said he was connecting in his note
I am not sure why some readers here argued that “taking vacation is not a crime” and “Kirby is not the IT Head”. Nobody said taking vacation is illegal nor Kirby must use IT skills to solve the issues here. What a weak argument. It is the leadership style. Nobody expected President Bush to go clean up the two towers on Sep 11 or drive the ambulance; but imagine President Bush took a vacation when it happened. That is what the comparison here.
Sounds like remote work is here to stay! He handled a major global operations outage while at the airport and Costa Rica and fix things fairly quickly unlike another airline.
No real reason for companies to want people in the office 5 days a week.
@Gary
His note just said he was travelling through Denver – does not mean he was connecting (doesn’t mean he wasn’t connecting either). Just seems like an odd choice given his family spends most of their life in Denver and if he was going from his Chicago home he could have taken a direct.
Could also be a case of him connecting and his family wasn’t etc.
Kirby and his IT dept has made Ed Bastain look like a incompetent fool and has earned an extra week of vacation in Liberia, IMO.
Mission Accomplished.
This is poor leadership shown by Scott Kirby to pull his version of a Ted Cruz.
I was impacted by the outage and had my flight rebooked from Sunday which I had already checked in to a Monday flight where they downgraded me to Economy. My ticket I paid for was RT in First. Talk about screwing passengers over and terrible customer service.
My CC company noted I needed a letter from United about the cause of the delay and United gave me an email to request the letter.
I will be hesitant to fly United again after this and the horrific customer service experience. Yes, I know it’s not as bad as what happened to Delta passengers. Needless to say the Airlines and their leadership need to be held accountable.
Stupid article. End of the day, what was he going to do further that couldn’t be done remotely. The snoop(s) who reported this ought to get a life!
Costa Rica is beautiful in July. Instead of asking why Liberia, you should be asking if he is making money for the shareholders.