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| PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS |
Mr. Munoz, who turned 57 this month, suffered a heart attack in October and has been on medical leave. United said late Wednesday that the transplant was considered the “preferred treatment” and wasn’t the result of a setback in his recovery.
United directors learned Tuesday about the ailing CEO’s imminent heart transplant, one person close to the matter said late Wednesday.
The airline declined to say where the surgery was performed, but said it would provide additional information within 24 hours.
United earlier had said it expected Mr. Munoz to return to his duties some time in the current quarter, but the company said Wednesday that date may slip to the beginning of the second quarter. Brett Hart, formerly United’s general counsel, has been acting CEO since shortly after Mr. Munoz fell ill.
Mr. Munoz’s illness has shaken a company that was already under stress. The company had been plagued by poor labor relations and operational glitches since it was formed in a 2010 merger.
Mr. Munoz, a former railroad executive and longtime United board member, ascended to the CEO position after his predecessor was ousted in September and had served for just six weeks before he suffered the heart attack.
Mr. Munoz by that time had already outlined a new strategy for the nation’s second-largest airline by traffic, one designed to improve employee morale, customer service and punctuality.
His absence has created worry among workers who immediately took to Mr. Munoz, and has forced the management team to juggle roles and improvise to stick to his vision.
Mr. Munoz visited United’s operations center in its downtown Chicago headquarters on Thanksgiving, a rare public appearance since his October heart attack. People who saw him said he looked well.
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute says recovery time for a heart transplant often involves one to two weeks in a hospital and several more months of monitoring, including frequent blood tests, echocardiograms and heart-tissue biopsies. Recipients must take medicine to prevent their immune systems from attacking their new hearts. The survival rate in the U.S. is about 88% after one year and about 75% after five years.
It is rare for a sitting corporate executive to undergo an organ transplant. John C. Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group, underwent a successful heart transplant in February 1996. The prior month, Mr. Bogle, who was born with a heart condition, had stepped down from the CEO job at the investment management company but remained chairman.
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., underwent a liver transplant in 2009 during a medical leave for a condition the company hadn’t explained.
Several months after he returned to work in June of that year, Mr. Jobs appeared in public for the first time. He said he had received the liver of a young adult who died following a car accident, and urged others to become organ donors.
Mr. Jobs died in 2011 after battling pancreatic cancer.
According to the not-for-profit United Network for Organ Sharing, there are currently more than 4,100 candidates on a national waiting list for hearts for transplant surgeries. The list for all candidates waiting for kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts and other organs is nearly 122,000 people.
Once a person is accepted by a transplant hospital and goes on the waiting list for an organ, the wait time can range from a day to many years, the organ-sharing network said. A match between a donor and the recipient depends on blood type, the degree of immune-system match, genetic makeup, the medical urgency of the recipient and his or her time waiting, Unos said.
The network, which coordinates organ donations to people needing transplants, reported on its website that there were more than 2,300 heart transplants performed in the U.S. from January through October 2015, and 2,655 in 2014. The largest number of recipients were between 50 and 64 years of age.
Mr. Munoz, who was president of railroad operator CSX Corp. before he became United’s CEO, said in an interview shortly after he arrived at United that he enjoys bike riding, playing golf and tennis and surfing.
He and his family live in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., near CSX headquarters in Jacksonville.
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