Cendant Corp. yesterday announced Gordon Bethune, former CEO and chairman of Continental Airlines, as chairman of the company's Travel Distribution Services division, one of four Cendant spin-offs that the company expects to complete early in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Bethune will play a key role in recruiting a CEO and president for the division and will remain as non-executive chairman of TDS, once the spin-off is complete, the company said.
Bethune is credited with helping Continental emerge from its $600 million annual loss in 1994 as one of the better-performing major airlines. In a career that spans nearly three decades, Bethune also has held executive positions at Braniff International Airways and Western and Piedmont Airlines, as well as vice president and general manager at Boeing Corp.
Business Travel News named Bethune one of the 25 most influential travel executives of 2000 for maintaining Continental's strong financial and operational numbers and settling with partner Northwest Airlines to repurchase its shares while extending the commercial alliance
(BTN, Jan. 15, 2001).
"Gordon Bethune has led a remarkable career in the travel industry and I am very pleased that he has elected to bring his wealth of talent and experience to Cendant's Travel Distribution businesses," Cendant's chairman and CEO, Henry Silverman, said in yesterday's statement. "He is a strong, engaging leader whose turnaround of Continental was marked by his strategic mindset, sharp intellect and exceptional ability to attract and develop a world-class management team. It should come as no surprise his first critical task near-term will be to help me identify and recruit a chief executive for TDS."