American Airlines: CEO History

Parker earned an MBA from Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management, where American Airlines itself recruited him after a campus interview, though he instead built his career at America West, becoming its CEO just ten days before the September 11, 2001 attacks and steering it through the crisis. He engineered America West's 2005 reverse-merger into US Airways, ran the combined carrier as CEO, and then orchestrated the 2013 merger of AMR Corporation (American's bankrupt parent) with US Airways to form American Airlines Group, a deal that made the once-smaller America West executive the head of the world's largest airline.

Horton had been AMR's chief financial officer before becoming president in 2010. During the bankruptcy he initially argued American could reorganize as a standalone carrier, then supported the merger once creditors made clear they preferred a combination with US Airways.

Arpey had been chief operating officer before taking the top job. His decision not to use bankruptcy left American with higher labor and pension costs than Delta, United and US Airways, all of which had restructured in court, and that cost gap was the reason AMR eventually filed in 2011.

Carty resigned on April 24, 2003 after it emerged that executive bonuses and pension protections had not been disclosed to employees before they voted on those concessions. Gerard Arpey, then chief operating officer, replaced him.

Crandall, born in Westerly, Rhode Island in 1935, earned a Wharton MBA on an Arthur Young scholarship and worked as a credit supervisor at Eastman Kodak and a computer-programming supervisor at Hallmark before joining TWA in 1966, rising to vice president and controller. He joined American Airlines in 1973 as senior vice president of finance, became president and COO in 1980, and succeeded Albert Casey as chairman and CEO in 1985, giving him over a decade of internal finance and operations experience before taking the top job.

Born in 1899 in Minerva, Texas, Smith left school-age jobs as a cotton picker and bank teller after his father abandoned the family, later studying business at the University of Texas and working as an accountant at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company before Fort Worth aviation entrepreneur A.P. Barrett hired him as assistant treasurer of Texas Air Transport. That carrier merged with others into American Airlines, and Smith became its president in 1934 at age 35, holding the role for four decades aside from wartime service as a US Army Air Forces general.