Mr. Kirby Goes To Washington
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby posted a video of a recent trip to Washington, DC, pulling back the curtain on how the job of being an airline CEO and a politician is inextricably mixed.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby Goes To Washington, DC
Kirby is a hands-on, detail-oriented CEO. While his predecessor Oscar Munoz was an incredibly kind man who seemed to me to be the right man at the right time to restore morale at United after the disastrous tenures of Jeff Smisek (and Glenn Tilton before him), Kirby has a pulse for the industry like no other. Far more than a figurehead, Kirby is the mastermind behind United’s great rebound into a two-way competition with Delta for the most premium U.S. carrier.
Ask Kirby about frequent flyer programs, route maps, aircraft types, onboard amenities, labor contracts, or just about virtually anything relating to the airline, and he can address it…and it’s clear he knows what he’s talking about. While some of his lieutenants bloviate with whitewashing doublespeak, he’s refreshingly candid…a straight shooter who does not shy away from controversial topics and also makes himself available to key stakeholders rather than sending notes written by other people.
With the airline industry so heavily regulated, part of being an airline CEO is cajoling public officials toward desired policy outcomes. We saw that most brazenly on display during the pandemic, when Kirby and his colleagues were able to talk the US government into bailing it out via a taxpayer-funded subsidy. While carriers across Europe had to pay back governments for COVID-era bailouts, Kirby walked away with loan forgiveness.
In the video below, we see a day in the life of Kirby in Washington, DC. It includes stops at United’s posh new DC office (United, like other US carriers, has a lobbying arm based in Washington, DC), a visit to the US State Department, a meeting with Airlines for America (A4A), which is the trade association representing US airlines, and stops at the offices of elected represenatives on Capitol Hill.
Think about Air Traffic Control modernization. Who is going to pay for it? In Kirby’s mind, the more this cost can be transferred to all US taxpayers rather than drawn from airport fees passed directly onto consumers who fly, the better. That’s because higher ticket costs do turn away customers and do not benefit United when they come in the form of higher taxes/fees.
CONCLUSION
To some extent, it’s all a game…the game that is inherent in a representative republic like the USA. And love him or hate him, Kirby is the man of the hour for United and his hands-on approach to leadership is aimed at trying to deliver shareholder returns. In other words, he’s doing his job. I don’t hide the fact that I quite like Kirby and while I do not support all of the things he has pursued as CEO like MileagePlus devaluations and pandemic-era bailouts, I understand he’s a man on a mission and his role is a highly political one.