Delta COO Focuses on Winning Over Workers

NEW YORK_A former industry consultant, Jim Whitehurst has rapidly moved up the ladder in his four years at Delta Air Lines Inc. to the No. 2 position at the company.

Though he's been mentioned as a possible successor to Chief Executive Gerald Grinstein, Whitehurst isn't saying much about his future ambitions at the nation's third-largest airline except that he plans to stay for a while. At the moment, the 38-year-old chief operating officer said he's focused on winning over employees who have been concerned about job and pay cuts at the bankrupt airline.

"The greatest challenge for me and for Delta is with all of the uncertainty and ambiguity and pain and sacrifices we're asking all of our people to go through, it's really keeping the hearts and minds of the people," he said Thursday in an interview.

Whitehurst has been the public face of late for the Atlanta-based company, speaking with employees and representing Delta at a speech before the Wings Club, an aviation industry group, in New York on Wednesday. Grinstein, 73, has said he plans to stay with Delta through its bankruptcy case, but he has not said anything about his plans beyond that.

The problems facing the major airlines, from high fuel prices to increasing competition from low cost carriers, might make someone like Whitehurst, who didn't start his career at the airline, a good choice to lead the company because of the need for a new strategy, said Gerald Kraines, head of Jaffrey, N.H.-based executive development firm The Levinson Institute.

"The dinosaurs of the industry are being replaced by the folks who are building on the Southwest model," Kraines said, referring to the Dallas-based low-cost carrier. "In some ways, he probably is the best kind of candidate. The real question is, is he in fact bright enough, whether he has the capacity to deal with that level of complexity?"

A Columbus, Ga., native, Whitehurst graduated from Rice University in 1989 with degrees in economics and computer science and soon took a job in the Chicago office of The Boston Consulting Group, which specializes in corporate finance, marketing and sales and strategy. After three years consulting on manufacturing and financial services, he went to Harvard to get a masters in business administration, then returned to BCG to work with airline and travel and tourism clients, including Delta.

Whitehurst, a father of twin 4-year-olds, took a finance job with Delta in the fall of 2001, quickly moving up to planning and network positions. He became chief operating officer in July.

Whitehurst said he's been spending a lot of time lately meeting with employees - he talked to maintenance workers on Thursday - and responding to e-mails to answer their questions and to talk about where the company is heading. Some have expressed concerns as Delta has announced over the last four years it would cut up to 33,000 jobs as well as reduce pay.

"My goal at Delta is to return our service levels to industry leading, which they were for decades until the mid '90s," Whitehurst said. "If we do that and keep the hearts and minds of our people as we do that, it will ultimately lead to financial success."

Robert F. Gilmore, dean of the business school at Metropolitan College of New York, said there are pros and cons to Whitehurst's past work as a consultant and only a few years at an airline.

"Experience has a double edge to it," Gilmore said. "Some people who are in the industry for a very long time, because their perspective is only from that vantage point they can't come up with new solutions. The double edge is experience helps. Experience sometimes allows you to avoid pitfalls."

Whitehurst pointed out that as a consultant for airlines, he did some work on international alliance issues and general strategy and spent a year working in a hangar helping cut maintenance costs and improving efficiency.

He said his goal is to make Delta a successful airline and indicated he plans to stick with the company through the turbulence of the bankruptcy process.

"There's never been a company that I've wanted to leave consulting to work for other than Delta," Whitehurst said. "It's a company I can feel very passionate about and feel passionate about saving."

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Delta Air Lines Inc.: http://www.delta.com