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The COVID-19 pandemic had a dramatic impact on the airline industry as travel advisories and bans grounded planes across the globe. As travel opened up, airlines took on new challenges with health and safety concerns. And, today, airlines, like other industries struggle to hire the full workforce needed for success.
Jon Roitman, chief operating officer of United Airlines, is in a unique position to discuss all of this as a guest of the VOE Podcast. Roitman is responsible for all airports flight operations, technical operations and network operations. He is also responsible for safety across United’s global network.
The VOE Podcast is an extension of Voices of Experience, the signature speaker series at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. Keep tuning in each month for more business insights from Daniels’ alumni voices of experience.
Transcript:
Kristal Griffith:
Hello, and welcome to the VOE Podcast, an extension of Voices of Experience, the signature speaker series at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. I’m your host Kristal Griffith from the Daniels office of communications and marketing. We’ll be unpacking topics at the intersection of business and the public good with CEOs and other business leaders from the Daniels community.
Let’s dive in. Joining me today is Jon Roitman, chief operating officer of United Airlines. In this position Jon is responsible for all airports flight operations, technical operations, and network operations. He is also responsible for safety across United’s global network. Imagine those responsibilities during a pandemic.
Jon has been in the airline industry for 25 years working for United and Continental Airlines. He served in the U.S. Army from 1985 to 1992 and he happens to be a graduate of the Daniels College of Business receiving a masters in real estate and construction management in 1997. What an interesting background. Jon, welcome to the VOE Podcast.
Jon Roitman:
Thank you, Kristal. I appreciate the invitation.
Kristal Griffith:
Absolutely. We’re honored to have you. So kind of I think the first thing we’ve got to ask you is how on earth you’ve gotten to where you are, right? You have such an interesting background. You have a bachelor’s degree in engineering from West Point. You have a master’s degree from the Daniels College of Business in real estate and construction management. So to me that seems so different than a COO of United Airlines, but I’m guessing you can make some sense of it for us. So how did you get where you are?
Jon Roitman:
Thanks, Kristal, and thanks for that first question. So first of all yes, I went to West Point and sort of time in the military as well. And when I got out of the military I decided I wanted to be a real estate developer and was fortunate enough to attend the Daniel’s College of Business, which I really enjoyed.
And at that time this sort of tells you that you never know what’s going to happen in life because at that time I was recruited by Continental Airlines, which was based in Houston at the time, to come into their construction and design group to build airports and for a youngster, a young adult back then that sounded really exciting. And I knew there were flight benefits and all those cool things.
So I pursued that opportunity after getting my degree at Daniels and started out doing really exciting things and designing construction around the world specifically to building airports. At the time Continental was really growing in Latin America so I spent a ton of time in Latin America and it was a lot of fun. But I only really did that short period of time because of the background I had in the military there were some leaders at Continental at the time that thought maybe I had an operational mindset because I had experience in that.
So they drew me into the operation side of the business pretty quickly and 25 years later I’ve progressed up to operations to the chief operations officer role. So it’s been you never know in life what twists and turns and where you’re going to end up, but it was a great path for me personally.
Kristal Griffith:
As you may know Daniels education and curriculum are based around ethical leadership and the public good. So what does that mean to you as a leader? How do you lead ethically and with kind of social good in mind in your leadership role?
Jon Roitman:
Yes, that’s a great question. So for me and, again, I went to West Point to do honor country and honor code and all those things and in the military certainly ethics is paramount. So for me that was as simple as just always doing the right thing, always.
And when we take the values and so on that we learn over our lifetime and here at United when you connect that with training that we’re constantly reinforcing and ensuring there’s clarity around what the right thing is and a lot of different scenarios sometimes some could get confused about what the right thing is.
And so it’s the responsibility of the company to make sure there’s really good training, really good clarity. And when you connect that with the values that we all have we should be able to ascertain what the absolute right thing to do is in the majority of situations and when you can’t you have to have a culture where people can ask the question and come forward in a safe way sometimes if they see something that is peculiar.
So we have all that at United and it’s ingrained in the DNA of our leadership at United, but it doesn’t come without effort. Again, we have to make sure that we’re constantly refreshing training as the digital world expands and gets bigger and bigger, there’s complexities that continue to develop and so we have to keep the training very current.
Kristal Griffith:
Certainly. We’re going to dive into that because I’m very curious how operations is working all at United given everything that’s going on. But let me first ask a little bit about while we’re on the topic of values, really ask about diversity, equity, inclusion. So I know are values that are very important to your organization and the Daniels College of Business.
I understand you’re the executive sponsor of Beacon, the United Black and African American Business Resource Group. And I understand Beacon is one of the most active and innovative business resource groups in the company. So can you share a little bit about that group and the priorities of United in this area?
Jon Roitman:
Yeah. I’ll start out with the fact that United has established diversity, equity and inclusion as a strategic comparative amongst other strategic comparative, but a really important strategic comparative. And I’ve been doing this 25 years and I’ve had sort of seen these programs come and go. And to be honest the effectiveness of the programs haven’t always been so great or they start out really good and they fade.
Now this time this feels really different. And a lot of it has to do with sort of a bit of a wake-up call from some of the events that have happened over the last couple years in our communities, George Floyd and others that really has caused us to do some soul searching and so far as what we’re doing to make a difference at United given the fact that we’re a global airline and a big business and can influence a lot of things internally and maybe externally.
So we really have embraced DEI and what I think is a really exciting way. And to me it feels sustainable. It feels sticky, but it’s a work in progress. Honestly, we’re in early days and Beacon, you mentioned Beacon, we have a variety of business resource groups. Beacon is the one that the example you’re giving mainly because I’m the executive sponsor and Beacon has been in place I think about a year around that amount of time and it already has done some wonderful one things internally and in our communities as well.
But those are just seeds that we’re planting. There’s a lot more work to do. We really want to make sure that within the fabric of the United Airlines that we create fair opportunities for everybody and that’s a lot of hard work. It’s a cultural shift to be able to do that. There’s things that we have initiated, for instance, our Aviate Academy, which is a flight academy in Phoenix that’s wholly owned by United Airlines and is meant to hire and train about 5,000 pilots over the next 10 years, that is a commitment we’re making that half of those will be people of color or females. And we had our first class here just started in December 6th was a very first class. This is a state of the art program. Nobody has a program like this nor has anybody made the commitment around diversity by the way like we are. And the applicant pool already is showing really good indicators.
We’ve had first class was I think around 90 students to start out with, but the applicant pool that we’ve had overall it’s been about 8,800. So there’s a lot of interest and 75% of that 8,800 are people of color or female. So we’re hitting the mark on the applicant pool. We’re going to hit the mark on producing world class pilots with a really bright future. And pilots the competition is quite good. The benefits at United are extraordinary.
So these are real great opportunities relative to what our values and our strategic comparative around diversity. And also it’s another benefit Kristal that I think is really important. There’s a bit of a pilot shortage right now. It’s well documented. And it’s our belief that because of the playing field hasn’t always been level for everybody that by removing barriers we’re creating a bigger talent pool of extraordinary talent and so that’s part of the method here as well.
Kristal Griffith:
I love it. And, I mean, I feel like that leads right into your operational goals I’m guessing. So you took over June of 2020. So you have never kind of had this position in a normal pre-COVID environment. Is that true?
Jon Roitman:
That’s true.
Kristal Griffith:
So what has this been like for you?
Jon Roitman:
You’re right. I took over a number of months into COVID and I would say it’s been a wonderful journey, but not without challenges and that there’s a need, there’s no playbook for a lot of what we’re doing to endure the crisis, which isn’t over yet or set ourselves up for the future. And there’s a lot we’re doing to set ourselves up for the future that’s very different from our competitors, but there’s no playbooks.
So a lot of it from an operational perspective has required real creative thinking not just for me but for my team, a real transformational mindset, real deep thinking about how we modernize everything that we do in operations. And as well no nobody is really contracted in the size of our airline and then had expanded so rapidly. That’s never happened.
So, again, you don’t just take a playbook off the shelf but we’ve had be really purposeful and so far as our planning around how to rebuild the airline and we’re doing that. And we’re doing it and as you know the landscape is very slippery and far as hiring and resourcing and supply chain constraints and all those sorts of things. So it’s taking some real smart thinking by my team and me involved as well to make sure that we’re maneuvering the right way to rebound and build for the future.
And again, I haven’t had to do this job prior to COVID, but I would say that it’s been unbelievably fulfilling and I’m grateful that I’ve been able to build up leadership skills that are benefiting our airline and all of our employees. And I’ll give a nod to my predecessor who had the role before me set some good groundwork there as well that I could step in and really work to take it the next level.
Kristal Griffith:
So I have kind of two follow ups with that. And I’m just curious what you are like as a leader. What is your style? You have kind of a philosophy, or a way you lead, or what are you like?
Jon Roitman:
Yeah. I do. I would say at its core I’m a people person and I really believe strongly that relationships matter a lot, especially in an industry that’s a service industry and that’s how I operate not just relationships. But I came up through the airline of the 25 years out in the field. Certainly, I have a headquarters-ish based role, but I’m out on the field a lot and I’ll never not do that. I really get my energy from being out in the field and our employees around the globe like to see me out in the field and it’s a better way to sort of understand the challenges that employees are faced with every day and the support that they need. So at its core of what I do, it’s about people, it’s about building trusting relationships.
Now, I’ve evolved over the years because in past years I’ve been able to really rely just on that, but over the years I’ve gained a real, real appreciation for process and not just understanding a process, sitting in a conference room, but going out and touching processes and really working hard to ensure that we’re improving processes for our employees. And I’ve also really gained, let’s just say, a sincere appreciation for innovation because if you think of really good ideas around innovation, and I like to call it modernizing, oftentimes it’s a win, win, win.
It’s better than win-win where it’s really great for employees and customers, but there’s a third win in that we’re efficient organization when we modernize and we do it the right way. So really it comes down to people, processing, and systems, you hear that all the time, but I’ve been able to evolve and have strength in those areas as a leader.
Kristal Griffith:
Totally makes sense. I love it. So the other follow up question is more along this what you alluded to, right? Kind of the great resignation. And a lot of people are choosing they want to work remote or stay home or all these things, and that’s really just not a possibility for most of the employees at United Airlines. So how are you kind of combating these labor issues? You spoke one, a training program earlier. What other things are you doing?
Jon Roitman:
Yeah. So I’m going to break it down into two categories because we have management and administrative employees, and there’s sort of frontline employees, and certainly there’s different departments when you consider the frontline employees. But we’re not real to the frontline employees, we’re not seeing a great migration, and I’ll tell you some of the reasons for that in a minute.
Actually for all of our employees, we’re not seeing a great migration. And actually the reason for that is there’s a few levels to it. One is through the pandemic, we have led. We saw the pandemic coming. We’re really realistic about the impact of the pandemic and our way forward and I think we did a really good job about communicating with our employees and doing it consistently and broadly enough, because our employees are around the world, almost 70,000 around the world.
Those are real strengths for us as we maneuver through the pandemic. We also decide that we weren’t going to sit on our thumbs as we work to endure the pandemic and do all the right things from that perspective, which fortunately we did. We would also behind the scenes work to transform our airline and take that opportunity really to work hard on modernizing.
And in a lot of instances, we led whether it’s our clean plus program, which was at the time was one of its kind partnership with the Cleveland Clinic and Klorox. Whether it was really quickly creating, as much as we could, a touchless environment for customers out there and our employees, in some instances, we led in that perspective, whether it was eliminating change fees, which was always a big annoyance for customers, we’d led and eliminated change fees. Where we got, and where we evolved to was a place where our employees are proud to work here for sure. And we’re also, you had mentioned a little bit earlier, you talked about doing good. Well, I think we’re on the right path relative to DEI, we talked about that, but also sustainability and really taking our role serious relative to what we can do to deal with the environmental factors that we’re dealing with of the day.
And that puts us in a situation where our employees are proud to work here, which when you combine that with work that we’re doing, which isn’t easy by the way, to ensure everybody feels they’re being treated fairly, they’re fairly compensated, they have fair benefits, and that we’re evolving. When you put all that together, we’re just not seeing the great migration.
Now, we are seeing sometimes good leaders leave and we’re having hard time hiring for sure. Everybody is having a hard time hiring, but the stickiness of our employees staying united is there for sure. One more point is you talked about remote work. It’s my belief that flexibility is really important. It’s going to be really important in the future.
Relative to management administrative, we have a hybrid philosophy that’s giving our management administrative employees flexibility. And sometimes they will need to be in the office and sometimes they absolutely can do their work remotely. And I think that’s important because it has to a quality of life and quality of work life and that sort of thing. So that’s just one example of considerations to ensure that we’re taking care of our people.
Kristal Griffith:
That’s so important, right? And I was thinking while you were talking about the sustainability piece, at Daniels, we talk a lot about the triple bottom line and you kind of hit on all of those, and not in those words, but people are important, the planet is important, and you’ve got to obviously make money. You’re a business.
So let’s talk a little bit about, I don’t know if many of our listeners have driven by Quebec in Denver, but you guys have an amazing pilot training facility there. So it’s one of the largest and most sophisticated facilities in the world. So how is that helping, I guess, kind of train your pilots and maybe what does this mean for kind of future employment and keeping everybody trained at United?
Jon Roitman:
Yeah. So we do have a magnificent training center right there in Colorado. And it’s 23 acres, it’s 550,000 square feet of training space, 38 flight simulators. It’s magnificent. And really if we’re going to train our pilots to world class standards, we have to have absolutely world class facility, and we do.
Now, there’s 12,000 pilots at United that there’s all sorts of recurrent training and so on that’s necessary and they flow through that particular training center, but we’re also hiring a lot of pilots. I think since March, we’ve hired 1300 pilots and we’re going to need new hiring. And so if you were to go to that training center, you would see that it’s buzzing with activity.
We’re actually training about 200 pilots or our output will be about 200 pilots per month. These are new hire pilots, let alone the recurrent training that happens there. So the building and the facilities are absolutely buzzing. We have magnificent growth plans. We had announced not too long ago, a 270 aircraft narrow body aircraft order, and that all augments about 250 aircraft that we already had on order.
So it’s about 500 airplanes that are coming to United and we’re not retiring aircraft. So these are incremental. So you can imagine that the resource needs from a pilot perspective, any work group, but we’re talking about pilots. The resource needs are pretty significant. So we’re going to actually expand our training center pretty significantly and do it in a really sophisticated way.
So it’s an exciting… I love going there. I get a great energy when I’m there and it’s an exciting part of our business, but it’s also an incredibly important part of our business relative to our pilot pipeline and making sure we keep the highest standards in the world. And we do have the highest standards and the best pilots in the world.
Kristal Griffith:
All right, Jon, so as a Voice of Experience, is there anything you wish you knew as a student? Is there a motto or a lesson you would want to pass on to students at the Daniels College of Business?
Jon Roitman:
Yeah, that’s a good question. What I would say, and I wouldn’t say that I didn’t know this as a student, but keep in mind I came out of the military, so it was a totally different structured environment. So on and so forth. From the military, I had learned the value of relationships and taking care of people as a leader, making sure that you’re connected to your people and you’re open and honest, and that you do a really good job listening and that you build trusting relationships with people that work for you.
I wouldn’t say that that was lost on me when I was a student but it was very technical what I was doing at Daniels. So when I was thrust into a leadership role, I had to remind myself of those really important leadership traits which fortunately I did early enough.
But maybe that would be lost on folks when they’re in a learning environment that’s very technical and less about leadership and that sort of thing. But the most valuable lesson, I think, anybody that can have in any business, doesn’t matter what you do is the value of relationships and value of creating trusting relationships within any environment that you might be working in.
Kristal Griffith:
Yeah, so important. I think those are my formal questions, but we always like to ask if there’s anything our guests want to share. So it could be about you, it could be about United, if there’s any kind of things you think it’s important for a student or our alumni to know.
Jon Roitman:
We’re hiring at United.
Kristal Griffith:
I love it.
Jon Roitman:
No, I’m just kidding. We are hiring. We’re looking for great people. But I didn’t go to a traditional college. Certainly West Point is not a traditional college. And so when I went to grad school at Daniels, it was a chance for me to go through advanced education, of course, but in a different way than I had experienced at the college level and just the ability to work in groups independently and collaborate independently.
I remember a lot of the assignments and so on required collaboration and we would go off to a bar or something and work together on projects and so on. A little bit different that my experiences in college. So I just had really wonderful experiences there. For me, it was not only the education, but there were some life lessons for me there that I didn’t necessarily…
I got different life lessons at West Point, but it helped round out all of my life lessons when I went to Daniels. I just felt super comfortable there and it was a great learning experience and helped round me out in a wonderful way. I’m a big advocate for Daniels and everything that you guys do there.
Kristal Griffith:
Oh, thank you. That means a lot to us. It has been such a pleasure. I thank you so much for joining us today.
Jon Roitman:
All right. Awesome. Remember United Airlines, part of the community there in Denver, we’re doing great things there. And thanks for your business. We definitely need that. But we also want to be even more part of the fabric of the community there in Denver. So thanks for inviting me today.
Kristal Griffith:
Absolutely. Thank you so much. This has been the VOE podcast produced by the Daniels College of Business and sponsored by US Bank. Music by Joshua Muetzel, music composition graduate student at the Lamont School of Music. Join us next time for more business insights from our community. In the meantime, visit daniels.du.edu/voe-podcast. And please remember to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This has been the VOE podcast. Produced by the Daniels College of Business and sponsored by US Bank. Music by Joshua Muetzel, music composition graduate student at the Lamont School of Music. Join us next time for more business insights from our community. In the meantime, visit daniels.du.edu/voe-podcast. And please remember to like, follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.