A lot of people credit Herb at Southwest for many of the great ideas that have helped WN succeed but they mistakenly forget that he was Rollins' lawyer, not the first CEO. Lamar Muse, a CPA and long-time airline industry veteran, including stops at Texas International and American Airlines, was the first president of WN. Herb just had the good sense to keep with the program established by Muse.
Many posters on this forum decry the scourge of the "beancounters," yet conveniently forget that Crandall was himself a beancounter (Crandall had an MBA from Wharton). As were his proteges, Carty, Arpey and Horton (plus all the others who left AA, like Parker). In the oft-linked Charlie Rose interview with Crandall, he told Rose that beancounting is essentially a prerequisite to running a successful airline.
I've read a lot of criticism of Horton on other sites (not so much on here) that either he is an AA lifer (and thus tarred with being current management that needs to leave) or that he's an outsider brought in solely to manage during the Ch 11 case. The latter might be true, I don't know, but the latter view ignores the fact that he, like many before him, is an AA lifer except for that short stint at AT&T. And objectively, who could blame him for bailing in 2002 when the future of looked very grim. My guess is that had Horton stuck around, he would have been tapped instead of Arpey in April 2003 when Carty was sent packing. I also assume that he would not have stuck with Arpey's eight year long objection to using Ch 11 to force labor costs in line with the competition.
As the hatchet man, however, many AA employees despise Horton more than they ever hated Carty or Arpey. It's normal to hate the person who is in charge on the day that labor costs are reduced by a billion dollars and work rules are completely re-written, undoing decades of negotiation success. And it's natural to hate the guy who follows the rest of the pack and implements serious outsourcing on a big scale (maintenance, fleet service and agents).
So if the long-term plan stand alone plan does not include Horton at the top, would AA look to an outsider (who would be criticised for not being "an airline person") or would AA promote someone from within (who's likely to be criticised as just another MBA-possessing beancounter)?
Elevating the company lawyer to the top spot worked out OK for Southwest. Over at UA, however, the former general counsel-turned CEO, Jeff Smisek, has stumbled repeatedly this year in attempts to combine two airlines into the world's largest. Gordon Bethune turned lackluster CO into a formidable competitor, even if their strongholds are in Houston and New Jersey. Bethune was a mechanic and pilot, although he did graduate from Harvard Business School. Since Bethune's retirement, he's joined that rarified group that includes Crandall as "the SOB that was at least our SOB." His successor, Larry Kellner, was yet another beancounting accountant. Before he joined CO, Kellner was CFO for a bank. When Kellner surprised everyone with his early retirement, the lawyer Smisek was tapped.
Crandall? Despite the impressive academic credentials, he was an airline lifer (except for a short stint at Bloomingdales). Horton, also a beancounter with an MBA, is also a lifer (except for the stint at AT&T). He may be hated, but he knows the airline biz. Plenty of accountants and lots of MBAs have run airlines. A few lawyers, with mixed results. The one thing the airline CEOs seem to have in common is that they all had some degrees, many of them graduate degrees. The degree doesn't guarantee they'll be worth a damn, but very few airlines have been turned over to someone without a lot of formal education.
