United’s CEO Is Here to Buy Your Struggling Airline

By nearly all accounts, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has a challenging personality. Earlier in his career, he’d make it clear if he thought a reporter or fellow executive asked a dumb question. “He would intimidate the hell out of people,” says Holly Hegeman, former publisher of industry newsletter PlaneBusiness Banter. Brian Sumers, editor of the Airline Observer, says, “Scott Kirby is one of the smartest people ever in the airline industry. If he has an Achilles’ heel, it’s that he absolutely knows it.” After United hired him in 2016, he went through executive coaching to improve his people skills. Oscar Munoz, the CEO at the time, says Kirby was considered “incredibly bright, but not always easy to work with.” And it’s not just people in business who’ve dealt with his … idiosyncrasies. On an early date with his now-wife, Kathleen, they went to see U2. Kirby was so bored, he sat and read a book.

Kirby, now 58, has mellowed—somewhat. It bothers him when people confuse Star Wars and Star Trek. He insists on eating salad with a spoon. And he’s not shy about leaving the impression that he’s the reigning intellect in the airline industry. Which might not be a bad thing. What with air traffic controllers sporadically losing contact with planes last year at the United hub in Newark, New Jersey; some Transportation Security Administration employees more recently abandoning airports during a partial government shutdown, followed by a war in Iran that has sent fuel and ticket prices skyward; and countless indignities travelers face daily, we’re living through a brutal time to fly. Maybe Kirby is the best person to grapple with such vicissitudes.