When Oscar Munoz became CEO of United Airlines in 2015, a number of issues—tortured union contract negotiations, challenging financial circumstances, frayed relationships with customers—meant that the company needed to turn itself around, and fast. Munoz immediately embarked on a listening tour, meeting with thousands of employees and customers—only to have it cut short when, 37 days into the job, he suffered a near-fatal heart attack. In his new book, Turnaround Time (Harper Business), Munoz credits both his recovery from his ensuing heart transplant and the revival of the airline to the support of employees and customers around the world.
“There was enormous doubt whether I would survive at all, much less return as CEO,” says Munoz, who is currently a director at Salesforce and serves on the boards of CBRE Group Inc., Univision Holdings Inc., and Archer Aviation. “But that’s when I started to receive this enormous outpouring of support from employees and people who had heard my message and wanted us to finish what we started. Getting off life support, learning to walk again after being in a coma, and returning to the employee-first strategy—all of it started with the people of United Airlines.” Now, Munoz says, he’s just a passenger, albeit one who’s “full of appreciation for this new generation of leadership at the top of the airline.”
On improving labor relations:
“During the listening tour, it was heartbreaking to talk with flight attendants who kept having to apologize for everything, from the quality of the coffee to the rules about changing seats. The attendants’ contracts had even expired, and five years after the merger of United and Continental the former employees of that airline were on a separate contract that mandated they only fly Continental planes and routes. By the end of 2016, new contracts for all unions were in place, and we made our number one priority investing in the workforce. Of course, some investors were unhappy: Days before I returned from the heart transplant, we had to deal with a potential proxy battle. Trust is a hard thing to put a precise value on, but when you have it, it’s invaluable, because the unions stood up for us, helping defuse the looming proxy battle.”
On innovative growth:
“There is no industry more complicated and fascinating than airlines [in terms of] how to operate profitably, because of the incredibly tight margins. You can’t just cut costs, because you need to offer an experience that will keep customers coming back—and win new ones. If you grow too fast and have too much capacity, prices come down. When we announced our three-year plan, Wall Street met it with hostility—our stock tanked by 12 percent in a single day—because we were attempting to rewrite the airline playbook. As many people will remember, we were going through a series of very difficult and public crises, but our employees performed with maximum grace. As a result, we reached our growth and financial promises to investors more than a year ahead of schedule.”
On his heritage:
“Many of my colleagues will be surprised to read this book and learn that I was born in Mexico, raised as a young child by my maternal grandmother—Mama Josefina—while my mom went to the U.S. to find work. In fact, until I reunited with [my mom] in Los Angeles, I thought my grandmother was actually my mother. Those early years with her, moving from town to town through the countryside of Mexico before immigrating to the U.S., were formative to who I am. Years later, Mama Josefina earned a living as a hotel maid in Las Vegas. She never missed a day of work. When she retired, at the tender age of 86, I went to her retirement party, assuming I’d find just a few of her friends sharing cake and coffee during a lunch break. Instead, hotel management had reserved an entire ballroom to fit everyone who wanted to meet this woman, who was tiny but towering in her resilience. From that moment on, I never forgot what it truly means to care for your fellow employees.”
On the future of flight:
“United’s history is a series of firsts: We pioneered transcontinental flight and introduced flight attendants and the first unions that backed them. Today, we are continuing to push the frontiers of aviation. I serve on the board of Archer Aviation, which is inventing a flying car that will fly people from their neighborhoods to the airports for the price of a rideshare today. Boom Supersonic is reviving the faster-than-sound travel that we were promised as kids. United Airlines Ventures is seeding game-changing technologies that will make United the leader in sustainable aviation. [These] are revolutions that we can only imagine today, but we won’t be able to imagine living without them in the future.”
