Help wanted: Turnaround specialist willing to work long hours, appease sparring labour groups, possibly steer one of the world's biggest airlines through bankruptcy and figure out how to make a profit. Excellent travel benefits, salary and stock options offered.
So might read the advertisement for the next chief executive at United Airlines, the No. 2 air carrier which warned on Wednesday it may file for court protection from creditors this autumn.
The search for a permanent replacement for interim and lame duck CEO Jack Creighton has taken on even greater urgency given the ongoing troubles at United's parent UAL Corp., industry experts said.
Creighton in May announced his intention to step down, stunning some veteran airline observers with the abrupt news.
"The urgency is high," said Kevin Mitchell of the Business Travel Coalition, which represents corporate airline customers. "They need someone with a lot of credibility. From all reports, and from the people I've talked to, there seems to be a bit of paralysis setting in at the senior management ranks."
Wednesday's bankruptcy warning pushed UAL shares to their lowest level in decades as they dropped below $2 in early New York Stock Exchange Trading on Thursday. Back in the late 1990s, they traded over $100.
In midday trading Thursday, after hitting a low of $1.95, shares rose four per cent to $2.56.
Two bond rating agencies on Thursday cut their ratings on UAL debt, citing the bankruptcy risk, making the airline's access to capital markets that much more difficult.
Sources familiar with the executive search say the committee on UAL's board of directors which is leading the campaign is close to choosing Creighton's successor.
One source said the company needs to choose someone quickly before embarking on the next round of wage concession talks with unions. United gave itself 30 days to cut deals with various groups as it faces a big fourth quarter debt payment and a decision from the Air Transportation Stabilisation Board on $1.8 billion in backing for private sector loans to UAL.
Sources believe the choice will be an industry outsider, as many industry veterans have shunned the job.
Those who have rejected it are said to include Fred Reid, president of Delta Air Lines, Alan Mulally, head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and Gordon Bethune, chief executive of Continental Airlines.
Also approached were Greg Brenneman, another former Continental executive who recently stepped in to run PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting division, and Richard Anderson, chief executive of Northwest Airlines.
Creighton, a UAL board member and former timber executive, was plucked off the board and put into the top job last October after angry unions demanded that then-CEO James Goodwin resign.
Goodwin sent a letter to employees shortly after the September 11 attacks warning the airline could perish unless losses stopped, and unions demanded his head.
Creighton, stepping into a public relations disaster, vowed he would not preside over a bankruptcy. But as UAL has continued to lose billions of dollars in an ongoing industry downturn, he or his successor may have no choice.
Creighton, who turns 70 in September, said in an interview in May he underestimated the magnitude of labor strife at United. He likened getting six labor unions to agree to wage cuts to solving an algebraic problem with six unknowns.
"It's a difficult, difficult task," he said. The new CEO at United, whoever he or she might be, will be the fifth in about a decade.
Darryl Jenkins, director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University, said United's senior management has introduced more problems than it has resolved as the company's finances deteriorated and its share price plummeted. He called Creighton's resignation announcement a blunder that effectively left the carrier rudderless.
"The problems there are getting out of hand," Jenkins said. "They are fully capable of carrying out a reorganization but there is no one there to make a decision to do that."
Don Delves, who runs executive compensation firm The Delves Group, said UAL can be expected to give up 2.5 million stock options at a minimum as part of a compensation package, given the rocky history and challenges present. "They're going to have to do a hefty option grant," he said.
Base salary could be in the $1 million range based on the going rate at companies with more than $10 billion in annual revenues, with a guaranteed bonus of the same amount or double depending upon performance, Delves said.
However, he noted that the base salary for AMR Corp. CEO Donald Carty in 2001 was $585,000, and Delta chief Leo Mullin's was slightly higher at $596,000.
"What this tells you is that compared to the really large companies, on average the airlines pay salaries that are significantly less than similarly sized companies," said Delves.