
Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines (via Delta)
I’ve never met Richard Anderson, but I think he has a public relations problem. He appears on a certain video that’s played over and over. It’s supposed to be serious. But many in the audience laugh—at him. And when the company he heads promptly fails to deliver—well, that laughter quickly turns to anger.
Anderson is the CEO of Delta Air Lines. The world’s third-largest carrier is starting a war with Alaska Airlines. Much of the battle will be centered around Seattle, where Alaska is headquartered and has half the service in and out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Delta has about one-eighth.
If you fly Delta, you know Anderson. Displaying his CEO ego, he appears in a video at the start of each flight. He extolls the airline and its employees, who in my experience are among the more surly in the air. Given what they have been through, including a bankruptcy, I can’t say I really blame them.
And, of course, they work for Richard Anderson, the CEO since 2007. “We have to watch that video, too, every flight,” one Delta flight attendant groused to me recently. That was the first time I heard an airline employee openly bad-mouth the boss since the 1980s when Frank Lorenzo used union busting and bankruptcy to run Continental/Eastern/Frontier/PeopleExpress smack into the ground. Is it a coincidence that Anderson’s first job in aviation was as a lawyer for Continental in 1987, when Lorenzo was still in charge? (As it happened, Anderson joined Continental the very same year my lengthy cover article for Texas Monthly accurately predicted the downfall of the hated Lorenzo and his enterprise.)
From what I, New To Seattle, can tell, Alaska Airlines enjoys a good reputation among Seattleites for pleasant service and fair prices. To me, Delta’s persona is that of a predator. The company charges what the market will bear, screws passengers—it just announced adverse changes in its frequent flyer program—and uses old equipment. Continue reading →
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