You may have heard that news that former American Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja has been hired by United Airlines to temporarily run its Kinective Media group as part of a larger shake-up in loyalty. The reaction to this and been particularly silly, so let’s set the record straight. This is a good idea.
We all know Vasu’s history at American by now. He rose through the ranks to become Chief Commercial Officer and pushed the airline in several different directions. He had some would-be successes like the tie-up with JetBlue… had it not been shot down by the feds. But he also had some very big failures, most notably the complete remaking of the sales and distribution strategy that has now been largely reversed.
We don’t need to relitigate his whole tenure here, because that’s not really relevant to what’s happening. Suffice it to say that Vasu was willing to move fast and break things, and had he had more competent supervision his tenure might have ended very different, or perhaps not ended at all. I don’t know anyone who would argue he’s not smart, willing to take risks, and interested in pushing hard to effect change. These are great powers to have when used responsibly.
Vasu has been quiet since he was dismissed from American in May 2024, but he recently came back to the surface as a co-founder and CEO of Dihedral. Orbitz Founder Jeff Katz has been toiling away on this project for some time, but Vasu has joined him and resurrected the plan. It is now something with more momentum behind it.
The public information on Dihedral is somewhat sparse, and by design it’s hard to really understand exactly what it does. Effectively the idea is to help companies (including airlines) to use data to create more personalized service delivery. How it works doesn’t really matter for this discussion — not that I know anyway — but the point is that data is the way forward to create a better individualized experience which will make for happier customers and get them to pay more in the end. Dihedral has a way to do that which doesn’t get held up by legacy tech garbage that still litters airline systems.
Got it? I know, I don’t fully get it either, but basically, use data, make more money.
With this background, it should start to make sense why Vasu is going to step in to run Kinective for a time. Kinective is United’s effort to create an ad network that is highly personalized. Initially it can know how and when to display ads on its seatback screens, and JetBlue will join in as well. But it can expand further. If United has good data, Kinective can better target advertising. Whether it works or not, we’ll see eventually. But you can see how this fits quite neatly with Dihedral’s work.
So now, United Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella can hire Vasu to run with Kinective. It’s all connected, just finding a way to use data to create a more tailored experience which will make the airline more money. Presumably Vasu will stick around long enough to do an integration with Dihedral’s systems, though I haven’t actually seen that actually announced. Then, a few months down the road, Vasu can step aside and United can find a permanent leader for the group.
This is a specific charge for Vasu, and he will have extremely competent supervision under Andrew. This couldn’t be more different than the situation at American, and it’s a great way for United to make Kinective really sink or swim quickly.
I’ve seen a lot of dumbassery over the years, but I have to admit that even I’m surprised by a lot of the really poor hot takes on this move. I’ve seen some saying that Vasu screwed up American, so it’s crazy to hire him here which is silly. But probably my favorite is the idea that this is somehow United CEO Scott Kirby taking revenge on his former employer American by hiring… the guy that American fired? In the immortal words of Benoit Blanc, it’s so dumb.
The world is not black and white. Context matters. Vasu is obviously a very smart and capable person or he wouldn’t have risen to the level he did at American. But the situation at American was never going to feed into his strengths with nebulous leadership and an uninspiring strategy to work under. You have to work with what you’re given. And in this case, it seems Vasu has been given something that should work quite well for all sides.
