American Airlines senior vice president of customer experience has announced her retirement at the end of 2019.
The retirement of Kerry Philipovitch is part of a long-planned personal desire to move into a new phase of her life, the airline says it has also been preparing for this day for some time.
Philipovitch will remain with the airline through the end of the year to assist with the transition.
Following her departure, American Airlines will reshuffle its operational and commercial teams into four main business pillars: operations, network strategy, revenue and customer experience.
Under the reshuffle, each pillar will be led by an SVP who will report directly to American president Robert Isom.
David Seymour, operations; Vasu Raja, network strategy, Don Casey, revenue; and Kurt Stache, customer experience; as well as Alison Taylor and Devon May.
Philipovitch began her aviation career in 1996 as a pricing analyst at Northwest Airlines before joining US Airways and later American. She has held leadership roles in revenue management, network and schedule planning, airport customer service and reservations.
At American, Philipovitch has overseen all aspects of the customer experience, including airport operations, customer planning, flight service, reservations, premium services, service recovery and cargo.
Commenting its management reshuffling, American Airlines president Robert Isom said: “This is an opportunity to sharpen our focus on the key parts of our airline: running a reliable operation, expanding the world’s best network, maximising all aspects of revenue to ensure American thrives forever, and delivering a superior customer journey as we create a world-class customer experience.
“This restructure puts innovative and extremely capable leaders at the forefront of these initiatives.”