United Airlines Officials Step Down in Midst of Federal Investigation

On Tuesday, United CEO Jeff Smisek and two other airline executives resigned amid company and U.S. Attorney’s Office inquiries into dealings between the airline and Samson, a longtime Christie loyalist. That inquiry focuses on whether United, the largest carrier at Newark, revived money-losing flights between the airport and Columbia, S.C., where former Port Authority chairman David Samson had a weekend home nearby, in exchange for improvements the airline wanted.

While Samson was chairman, the Port Authority approved contributing $10 million toward the building of the hangar, which opened previous year, and voted to push ahead with plans to extend the PATH commuter train line.

Maggie Lake of CNN discusses what the resignations say about United and the airline industry as a whole with Here & Now’s Robin Young.

Three Christie allies – his former deputy chief of staff and two former top executives at the Port Authority – were charged last spring with closing lanes and engineering all-out gridlock at the foot of the nation’s busiest bridge in September 2013 to exact revenge on a Democratic mayor who declined to endorse Christie’s re-election bid.

Samson is being investigated for his relationship with the airline.

According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Samson allegedly used his political influences to demand a special flight to his homeland state, South Carolina. United Continental Holdings, Inc. said Tuesday that Jeffery Smisek and two other senior executives had stepped down. And so we’ll see what occurs with this example, however the reality is when you’ve gotten 60,000 individuals working for you, there are going to be events when somebody doesn’t maintain as much as that normal. But New Jersey’s Democrat-led Legislature has not endorsed the proposal.

United Airlines should be saluted for how it handled the ouster of its CEO and chairman, Yale School of Management’s Jeff Sonnenfeld said Wednesday. Munoz said he is well-equipped for his new job because the railroad industry “has a lot of parallels”, including heavy government oversight and an organized labor force.

“Any mention of Bridgegate is another nail in Gov. Christie’s coffin, ” Matthew Hale, a Seton Hall University political scientist, said Wednesday.

Annie Presley, a Republican fundraising marketing consultant in Missouri who helped discover main donors for Mitt Romney’s presidential marketing campaign, stated donors weren’t more likely to abandon Christie over the United Airways controversy. “If and when there’s proof of wrongdoing, individuals will make the choice as as to if or not a contribution is acceptable”. If Christie needs to construct momentum, he should seize voters’ consideration shortly or they may begin writing off his candidacy, he added.

Wisniewski called for Christie to end his presidential campaign, saying there has been a “culture of corruption within the Christie administration and among his appointees at the agency”. Baroni and Kelly have pleaded not responsible.