Airline CEOs: the increasingly important quest to find the ideal characteristics

A corporate leader of any organisation requires an unusual, sometimes extraordinary range of skills. Inevitably not every CEO has these; nor does having the skills necessarily always triumph over external forces. Timing is not everything but it is important. With time, those external forces change the skill sets needed, for example when an industry is undergoing major upheaval.

Arguably, given the complexity of the airline business, a leader in this industry has greater demands placed on him (rarely her; there are very few women CEOs). And today the world must seem a particularly hostile place for legacy airline managements and their workforces, under siege from all directions. Meanwhile the Gulf carriers and many new short-haul low-cost models are changing the demands made on competitors, as protectionism slips away and hiding places become scarce.

This CAPA report examines some of the features involved in making a great airline CEO - or not.