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Hubert Horan began  his aviation career in the early 1980s as a consultant with the firms  of Cresap, McCormick and Paget and Mercer Management Consulting  (formerly Strategic Planning Associates/Temple Barker & Sloane).  Clients included Qantas, Air New Zealand, Philippine Airlines,  Lufthansa, Alitalia, Air Canada, Canadian Airlines, TWA, United,  USAirways, Pan American, People Express, Frontier, PSA,  AirCal, and  Amadeus. 

Between 1991 and 2002 he held Network and Strategic Management positions with Northwest, America West, Swissair and Sabena.

Consulting  clients in recent years have included ATA, Hawaiian Airlines, United,  the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, SN Brussels Airlines, Virgin  Express, Air Macau, Los Angeles World Airports and Air Pacific. He has also worked with investor  groups to develop business plans for both Low Cost Airlines and airport privatization projects.

In  the 1980s he developed the original plan for the TWA-Ozark merger and  participated in the USAir–Piedmont and Continental-People Express  mergers. He worked on a series of projects with Lufthansa and Alitalia  to help them prepare for liberalization within Europe, and prepared the  original plan for a Qantas-Australian-Air New Zealand merger. He has  also led major cost-reduction projects across the entire range of  airline marketing and operations functions, including Maintenance,  Flight Operations, In-Flight Service, Sales and Distribution, Station  Operations, Charter Operations and Revenue Management.

Following  the 1990s industry downturn, he led the massive restructuring of  Northwest’s international route network that was the key to Northwest’s  financial turnaround. In a one year period, Horan cancelled over 80,000  miles of unprofitable routes, including uncompetitive hubs  in Seoul, Boston and Guam, and reallocated flying to powerful hubs  in Detroit, Minneapolis and Tokyo, and helped Northwest achieve industry  leading profit margins only three years after a near-collapse into  bankruptcy.

Horan  developed and implemented the business and fleet plans that  America West used to successfully emerge from bankruptcy in the mid 90s.  That plan significantly repositioned America West as a coast-to-coast  carrier, dramatically reduced its direct competitive exposure to  Southwest Airlines, and profitably increased their fleet and operations  by 25%.

He  is one of the world’s leading experts on the international airline  alliances, having been responsible for the original development of the  KLM-Northwest alliance network, another major driver of Northwest’s  financial turnaround. Mr. Horan rapidly increased flying  between Amsterdam and NWA’s hubs from 2 to 9 daily flights, which turned  Northwest into the most profitable US airline on the North Atlantic.  Each of the subsequent North Atlantic alliances directly copied the  NW-KLM template.  He spent four years in Zurich grappling with  Swissair-Sabena, Europe’s first cross-border merger, and managing North  Atlantic alliances from the European perspective, including the  transition of Swissair’s alliance from Delta to American.

All  of his alliance innovations on the North Atlantic were both highly  profitable for shareholders and hugely beneficial for consumers.  Consistent with this dual focus he also moved aggressively to kill  alliances that did not create any competitive or financial value,  including the America West-Continental alliance, and the Qualiflyer  alliance between Swissair, Sabena, Austrian, TAP, Turkish, and a number  of other European carriers.

As  Swissair/Sabena management knew that the SAir Group’s conglomerate  strategy was doomed to fail, Mr. Horan led an internal effort to develop  restructuring plans for both carriers. His plan to reorganize Swissair  around its historical brand and longhaul product strengths was rejected  in favor of shifting to a dramatically different strategy under the  management of its regional subsidiary, a plan that cost Swiss taxpayers  US$4 billion and nearly led to the total liquidation of the airline. The  airline subsequently prospered under Lufthansa ownership, under a  strategy that included all of the major components of Horan’s original  approach.

He  developed an entirely different approach for Sabena, restructuring it  into a carrier strictly focused on local traffic. SN Brussels Airlines  became profitable only three years after the demise of Sabena. Horan subsequently helped develop the plan for merging SN Brussels and Virgin  Express. 

He  has been actively involved in the evolution of Chinese airline  competition, developing a detailed financial restructuring plan for Air  Macau, and designing network plans for three startup carriers, and  network plans for Shanghai-Pudong operations under a proposed China  Eastern-Shanghai Airlines merger. He has worked extensively on fleet  planning projects, including a recent major fleet upgrade at Air  Pacific. 

Horan  became an active opponent of the radical airline industry consolidation  that began in 2004, and sought to undermine the benefits of liberal,  market-based competition. While the original 1990s alliances were based  on major efficiency improvements that increased service and reduced  prices, the post 2004 changes reduced efficiency and created major new  barriers to competition. He provided expert testimony in several  antitrust immunity cases, testified before Congress on both the  Delta-Northwest and United-Continental mergers, and published a detailed article on the competitive impacts of recent antitrust immunity cases  in the Transportation Law Journal.

He  was also heavily involved with airline bankruptcy reorganizations. In  addition to internal work at Northwest, America West and Sabena, he  developed the restructuring plan for Hawaiian Airlines’ bankruptcy  emergence, which included the original plan for the development of  Hawaiian's Asian operations. He also worked for creditor groups on the  United and USAirways bankruptcies, and helped develop the Southwest-ATA  codesharing and asset swaps as part of ATA’s restructuring. More  recently he helped develop the plan to reject American management’s plan  for a standalone reorganization in favor of a plan to merge American  and USAirways within the bankruptcy reorganization process.