Two months before his 40th birthday, an executive named W. Douglas Parker reached a gigantic career milestone: He was named CEO of a major airline.
The airline was America West, and the date was September 1, 2001.
Ten days later, of course, the world changed — and the aviation industry along with it. But during the 20 years since then, one thing has stayed constant in the business, until now. Parker has been at the helm.
Last week, news broke that Parker, who is now 60 years old and the CEO of American Airlines after a series of mergers and acquisitions, will finally be stepping down.
I’ve written a lot about how and why business leaders in every industry should pay attention to the airlines. They’re publicly traded companies in a commodity industry, with an army of analysts, journalists, and stakeholders following their every move.
It’s hard to imagine another industry that’s so transparent, as a result, and from which more case studies of business leadership emerge on a regular basis: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Nobody’s name comes up in these stories more than Parker’s.
Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of American Airlines or not; Parker has had such a long career with so many teachable moments, that it’s hard to imagine the airline industry without him.
For example, I share a longer version of this vignette all the time; it encompasses an entire chapter in my free ebook, Flying Business Class (download here):
Parker once explained how he had to learn not to make off-the-cuff remarks on how things could be improved at the airline.
Why? Because, as he put it, “You don’t want to change the priority of something that wasn’t a priority. You want to be careful not to have people drop what they are doing so they can take care of something you noticed.”
Or else, there’s the story of how Parker was flying as a deadhead passenger on Southwest Airlines, and struck up a long conversation with a flight attendant who was Black, and who noticed him reading…