Kerry Philipovitch Announces Retirement; American Airlines Realigns Operations and Commercial Leadership Teams
American Airlines announced that Kerry Philipovitch, senior vice president of customer experience, will retire from the airline at the end of 2019. Philipovitch’s retirement is part of a long-planned personal desire to move into a new phase of her life and the airline has been preparing for this day for some time.
“Kerry is one of the very best leaders I have had the privilege of working with,” said American Airlines President Robert Isom. “She is a great advisor, consummate team player and champion of those we serve inside and outside the company. She led the industry’s largest reservations system cutover and has been at the helm of numerous efficiency projects critical to our integration. American is far better because of Kerry’s contributions, including her work to promote passengers’ rights, support our diversity and inclusion initiatives, and launch innovative customer service training for team members. We will miss her, but Kerry has more than earned the right to do what is best for her and her family. Thankfully she has trained a stellar group of leaders who will carry on her legacy to drive operational excellence with the utmost care for our team.”
Philipovitch began her aviation career in 1996 as a pricing analyst at Northwest Airlines before joining US Airways and later American. She has held leadership roles in Revenue Management, Network and Schedule Planning, Airport Customer Service and Reservations. At American, Philipovitch has overseen all aspects of the customer experience, including Airport Operations, Customer Planning, Flight Service, Reservations, Premium Services, Service Recovery and Cargo. Philipovitch will remain with the airline through the end of the year to assist with the transition.
Operations and Commercial Realignment
With this announcement, American is realigning its Operations and Commercial teams around four key pillars of the business: Operations, Network Strategy, Revenue and Customer Experience. The following four leaders will assume responsibility for these teams and each individual will report to Isom:
- David Seymour, senior vice president of operations
- Vasu Raja, senior vice president of network strategy
- Don Casey, senior vice president of revenue
- Kurt Stache, senior vice president of customer experience
“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,” continued Isom. “This restructure puts innovative and extremely capable leaders at the forefront of these initiatives.”
