American Airlines Making Big Leadership Changes

For weeks now, speculation has run rampant that American Airlines CEO Doug Parker was on the verge of being replaced.

Well, the beleaguered carrier made several leadership changes on Thursday—but none included Parker.

American made a series of moves but Parker is still in the big chair. The corporate structure now looks like this:

—Kerry Philipovitch, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience, officially announced her resignation after expressing a desire to tackle new projects elsewhere.

—Vasu Raja is now SVP of Network Strategy after serving as VP of Network Planning.

—Don Casey has been promoted to SVP of Revenue after serving as SVP of Revenue Management.

—Kurt Stache goes from SVP of Marketing to SVP of Customer Experience.

—Jill Surdek is being promoted to SVP of Flight Service.

“This is an opportunity to sharpen our focus on the key parts of our airline: running a reliable operation, expanding the world’s best network, maximizing all aspects of revenue to ensure American thrives forever and delivering a superior customer journey as we create a world-class customer experience,” American President Robert Isom said in a prepared statement.

The moves are intended to help quell some of the problems currently plaguing American, which include operational flow and financial issues. It’s not like American is in the red, but the airline has lagged behind Delta and United in revenue growth.

All of which has pointed directly to Parker’s leadership, which made Thursday’s announcements somewhat surprising.

When asked if Parker is going anywhere, airlines-shuffles-management-but-makes-no-change-at-the-top/?ss=cio-network#2b740a2062e1″ target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer”>spokeswoman Michelle Mohr told Forbes, simply, “No.”

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