In a bold understatement, American Airlines CEO Tom Horton has acknowledged in new stories that AA has had a rough few weeks.  Horton was admitting to AA’s operational problems primarily with respect to cancelled flights and reduced schedules due to pilot driven maintenance issues.

It’s notable that Horton would not speak about a merger with US Airways but did mention IAG (International Airlines Group: British Airways / Iberia) CEO Willie Horton was willing to take a minority stake in the airline to emerge from bankruptcy.

I strongly suspect that Horton and his team are continuing to look for every option to emerge independently from bankruptcy.  In short, he seems determined to benefit from the rewards previous airline CEOs have enjoyed upon emerging from bankruptcy rather than necessarily being oriented towards the best interests of AA’s stakeholders.

The problems going on at AA are many and not just limited to the pilots.  We now see an airline unable to cope with its unions with respect to coming to an agreement with pilots to settle the pilot induced operational problems as well as it seems to be having trouble figuring out how to deal with reduced staff as a result of “early out” options negotiated with unions representing flight attendants and mechanics.

Furthermore, it has enjoyed a PR disaster over the operational problems as well as the seat problems on 757 aircraft.

Here is the point:  None of these problems as a single event is that big of an issue.  Airlines go through these from time to time.  However, the ensuing perfect storm belies a company lacking leadership.   To further my point, this is really the first we’ve seen Tom Horton answering media questions in weeks and the answers aren’t entirely forthcoming.

Instead, we’ve seen subordinates and spokespersons responding to each problem as if to say “there really isn’t anything wrong here, look away.”

Denial starts to make you look stupid in these situations.  The growing consensus among industry observers is that it is time for this executive team to go.  I agree.

Whether it be a takeover by US Airways or another executive team, we see a leadership crisis that needs to be solved.  No one is out front and leading the airline through these crisis.  We continue to see “committee” responses to these problems that seem couched to avoid public mea culpas.  Airlines in denial fail more.

I expect that we will see financial results over the next few months that point to this denial and we’ll see a return to the “Wait, wait!  It will get better!  We promise” approach to advocating to the airline.

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