John Leahy

John Leahy (born August 1950) is an American businessman. He is a former chief operating officer–Customers at Airbus (2005–2017), as well as the company's chief commercial officer between August 1994 and 2017, and a former member of the Airbus main board of management. Well known as one of the commercial aviation industry's most prolific aircraft salesmen, he made a significant contribution to the increase in Airbus's market share, from 18% in 1993 to 57% a decade later. He is responsible for over $1 trillion in sales.

Biography Leahy has an MBA from Syracuse University and a BA from Fordham University. He is a licensed multi-engine commercial pilot and is a former flight instructor with nearly 4,000 hours of flying time. He flew cargo across the Great Lakes. From 1977 to 1984, Leahy worked in marketing at Piper Aircraft.

Leahy joined Airbus North America in January 1985, becoming head of sales soon after. He was appointed president of Airbus North America in 1988 with responsibility for the penetration of the strategic North American market, where most major U.S. airlines were Boeing and McDonnell Douglas customers.

His first deal was selling A320s to Northwest Airlines, which was a Boeing customer which was then the risk averse choice. When regular Boeing customer United Airlines bought the A320, this prompted Boeing to update the slower, shorter-range 737 Classic-400 into the more efficient, longer 737NG-800. To feed its New York and Miami hubs, Pan Am replaced its Boeing 727s by A320s but when it collapsed, lessor GPA placed them to Braniff, which then collapsed, America West Airlines took them, went through bankruptcy, and became its largest operator with US Airways and later acquired American Airlines which ordered 400 A320s. In 1993–1994, Boeing struck exclusive supplier contracts for 20 years to eliminate competition and bind American, Continental, Delta, United and Southwest: the deal was ruled illegal when Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged three years later, but was honored nonetheless.

In 1994, Leahy was appointed chief commercial officer at the main office of Airbus, the position of the sales chief which was previously allocated to a Briton. In this capacity, he has outlasted five Airbus CEOs, and seven Boeing sales chiefs. It maintained over 50% market share including deliveries until 2005.

Leahy is also known in the industry as a polarizing figure. Former Boeing sales chief Toby Bright said "John was the guy that at Boeing we loved to hate and we blamed him for a lot of the losses that we experienced against him". Rao stepped down and Eric Schulz, aerospace engineer and president of Rolls-Royce plc Civil Aerospace, replaced Leahy in January 2018.