Delta Air Lines President Glen Hauenstein will leave his role at the end of February. Network chief Joe Esposito becomes Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer.
Hauenstein has been running the airline while CEO Ed Bastian gives keynotes (plural) at CES Las Vegas, runs off to Paris while airline systems melt down due to the Crowds srike outage, and hangs out with Tom Brady.
Glen Hauenstein has been the architect of Delta’s network, revenue and premium investments and leaned in heavily to their long-standing gutting approach to SkyMiles.
Efforts like eliminating upgrades and monetizing first class seats to infrequent flyers for tens of dollars, and moving towards AI setting fares, is Hauenstein’s work.
He’s a very smart executive who understood that the airline consumer did not just want to buy based on schedule and price, and could be nudged along a path towards premium.
Hauenstein is not the only core loss for Delta. Operations chief Gil West left during the pandemic and stopped the arrests of customers over at Hertz.
On the one hand, one wonders whether the brain drain at the top puts Delta at risk. Already they have been resting on laurels and cutting back in-flight product (such as earphones in coach and thinning the first class snack basket) while continuing to operate an inferior business class seat that lags the entire rest of the industry on many transatlantic flights.
On the other hand his replacement is a 35-year veteran of the airline who has been running network planning – who has been mentored under Hauenstein- so it seems like a status quo transition in some sense.
Clearly Delta loses much tactical leadership and vision for where the industry is going.
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