When Oscar Munoz walked into the Willis Tower in 2015, United Airlines was basically a dumpster fire. I'm not even exaggerating. The previous CEO had just resigned amidst a federal bribery scandal involving a "Chairman’s Flight" to South Carolina. Employee morale wasn't just low; it was nonexistent. Continental and United had merged years prior, but the two cultures were still at war, refusing to even sit in the same break rooms.
Then came Oscar.
Most people remember him for the 2017 David Dao incident—the "dragging" video that went viral. But that's a superficial way to look at a man who literally died and came back to life while trying to fix a broken airline. Honestly, the real story of United CEO Oscar Munoz is about a guy who bet his career on "being nice" to unions and then had to get a new heart to finish the job.
The Heart Attack That Changed Everything
Imagine starting the biggest job of your life. You’re 37 days in. You’ve spent every waking second on a "listening tour," talking to flight attendants who hate you and mechanics who don't trust you. You go for a run along Lake Michigan, you get back to your apartment, and your legs just... give out.
Oscar suffered a massive heart attack on October 15, 2015.
He was a vegan. He was a marathon runner. It didn't matter. It was genetic. He ended up in a coma for a week. While the business world was speculating whether United would need a new-new CEO, Oscar was fighting to stay alive on an ECMO machine.
The birthday transplant
In a twist that sounds like a bad movie script, he got the call for a donor heart on his birthday: January 5, 2016. He underwent the transplant and, incredibly, was back in the office by March.
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Think about that. You have a literal heart transplant and you’re back to running a global airline in two months. That's not just corporate grit; that’s borderline insane. But he felt he had to prove to the employees that he wasn't quitting on them. He had promised a "New Spirit of United," and he wasn't going to let a minor thing like a chest cavity swap stop him.
What He Actually Did for the Employees
Before Oscar, United was obsessed with cost-cutting. They even took away the free coffee cups in the break rooms. Seriously. People were furious over literal paper cups.
Oscar did something radical: he listened.
He asked the staff for the "Top 10 Dumbest Things" United did. He brought back the coffee cups. He settled long-overdue labor contracts that had been festering for years. He understood that if the person scanning your boarding pass is miserable, you’re going to have a miserable flight.
- Stock Growth: Under his watch, United's stock value jumped about 54%.
- Labor Relations: He earned the public praise of union leaders who had previously spent their days trashing management.
- Operational Reliability: United stopped being the airline you joked about being late and actually started hitting its numbers.
The 2017 PR Nightmare
We have to talk about Flight 3411. You know the one. Dr. David Dao was forcibly removed from a plane in Chicago because United needed seats for crew members.
Oscar’s initial response was... not great. He used the word "re-accommodate" in a way that sounded like a robot wrote it. It was a disaster. He was skewered by the press, and honestly, he deserved it in that moment.
But here is where he was different from your average suit. He didn't just hide. He eventually came out and said, "We let policies and procedures get ahead of doing what’s right." He took the hit. He changed the rules so that compensation for giving up a seat could go up to $10,000. He made it so crew members had to be booked at least an hour before departure. He turned a PR catastrophe into a total overhaul of how the airline treated "overbooking."
Why the Oscar Munoz Legacy Still Matters in 2026
It’s easy to look back and say he was just another CEO, but that’s a mistake. He was the first Latino to run a major U.S. airline. He came from a blue-collar background, the oldest of nine kids. He wasn't some Ivy League legacy hire who didn't understand what it was like to work for a living.
Today, Oscar is mostly retired from the day-to-day airline grind, but he’s still everywhere. He sits on the board of Salesforce, CBRE, and Univision. He’s even involved with Archer Aviation, which is working on electric vertical take-off aircraft.
He’s basically become the elder statesman of "empathetic leadership." His book, Turnaround Time, which he dropped in 2023, is sort of the manual for how to fix a toxic culture without being a jerk.
Actionable Insights from the Oscar Munoz Playbook
If you’re running a team or even just trying to navigate a corporate office, there’s stuff to learn from this guy.
- Kill the "Dumb" Rules: Find the paper-cup equivalent in your office. What’s the small, cheap thing that is driving everyone crazy? Fix it immediately. It buys you more goodwill than a 5% raise ever will.
- Own the Mess: When Oscar messed up the initial response to the Dr. Dao incident, he didn't double down forever. He pivoted, apologized sincerely, and changed the actual policy.
- Humanity First: He famously told his team that the "North Star" wasn't profit—it was the people. If the people are taken care of, the profit usually follows.
Oscar Munoz didn't just save an airline; he proved that you could be a "cabeza" (the head of the family) rather than just a "jefe" (the boss). Whether he’s advising the Pentagon or sitting on the board of a tech giant, he’s still the guy who survived a transplant and a PR firestorm to prove that culture is the only thing that actually matters in business.
To apply this to your own career, start by conducting your own "listening tour" this week. Ask three people you work with—specifically those who don't report to you—what the biggest hurdle in their daily job is. Don't try to solve it on the spot; just listen and take a note.