Robert Isom's Chicago Problem
American's CEO can't communicate why he's fighting so hard for share at his third-largest hub. Could that cost him his job?
Dear readers,
Regardless of your preferred metric, I think we can say Scott Kirby has shown more acumen in building a profitable global airline than American’s Robert Isom. But Kirby isn’t doing that alone, and today is a good time to give a shout out to United chief communications officer Josh Earnest (President Obama’s former press secretary) who needled American this week with a well-timed press release and media briefing1 that really seemed to throw off Isom, who is not a good extemporaneous communicator in the best of circumstances.
Just one hour before Isom met with analysts on Tuesday to discuss fourth quarter 2025 results, United released its plans to fly 750 daily departures in Chicago this summer, fulfilling the promise Kirby made last week to draw “a line in the sand” at O’Hare, where the two airlines battle for gates. Analysts always were going to ask about it, but with United’s timing, Earnest guaranteed that Isom would have to spend considerable time addressing American’s loss-making strategy in Chicago.
Some CEOs2 could have handled that. But while Isom can be a good communicator (as he was a year ago after the crash of American Eagle 5342), I’ve noticed that he must prefer to read or memorize talking points for earnings calls. Most executives do that, but Isom seems so wedded to them that he can sound ridiculous when more than one analyst asks about the same topic — something that happened on Tuesday.
Confronted with multiple questions about Chicago (and how much money American intends to lose there), Isom flopped. Rather than meet the issue head on, Isom fell back on platitudes (“pleased with what we see so far,” he said in one response) that were never going to persuade analysts. I almost felt sorry for the guy, ambushed again by Kirby and United’s team.
This could just be another isolated communications error by Isom in a career full of them. But it might be more than that. As he struggled to communicate why he’s fighting so hard in Chicago, I wondered if Isom might not have much time left as CEO.
If he wants to save his job, I think he needs to come up with a more complete narrative about why he’s using so many resources on a fight in Chicago that he might not win. If he can’t — and he lets Kirby continue to define the narrative — Isom will keep looking overmatched. And overmatched CEOs rarely have much job security.
Here are some things that went wrong on American’s call, along with some thoughts on why it matters.