Page 29 - CL How to Read a Case Study

“United's CEO cheated death a month into the job and is now
leading the company in a battle to become America's best airline”

Thirty seven days after Oscar Munoz found himself running United
Airlines (29 August 2016), a company in deep crisis, he suffered a
massive heart attack which resulted in him spending five months off the
job.

He had been appointed to clean up the mess his predecessor's bribery
scandal had left the company in. Furthermore, negotiations with the flight
attendants' union had broken down and five years after a merger with
Continental, United still seemed to be operating as two airlines.

But on the day of his heart attack he was thinking about his staff and the
problem of the coffee cups which as part of a cost cutting exercise had
been replaced with styrofoam ones. Staffers - and even executives -
were so incensed by the tiny cost-cutting move that they put it on a list of
the top 10 mistakes they said the company had made in the past five
years.

The case of the cups would become something of a symbol of all that
had gone wrong at United since its merger with Continental in 2010, and
it was up to Munoz to restore the trust of employees and customers. But
before all that he had to recover from his heart attack.