Should a CEO Be a Nerd About Their Company’s Products? Speaking of Ben Schlappig at One Mile at a Time, he had a post last week that I’ve been thinking a lot about. The gist:

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom appeared in court yesterday as part of the current Department of Justice case. While being questioned, the topic of JetBlue Mint came up, which is JetBlue’s business class product . Isom claimed that he has never flown JetBlue Mint, and doesn’t know if JetBlue Mint is lie-flat. He then clarified that he understands that Mint is JetBlue’s domestic first class, but “can’t speak to all the amenities they include.”

Here’s the part that I’ve been thinking about:

I’ve had the opportunity to interact with quite a few senior airline executives over the years, and I find that their knowledge about competitors is typically one extreme or the other:

Some airline executives literally couldn’t tell you the first thing about their competitors, and have no knowledge of their passenger experience, fleet, etc.

Some…