American Airlines Group has appointed Anthony Richmond as chief legal officer, replacing Priya Aiyar who quit the business in February.
Richmond joins from Latham & Watkins, where he was a partner in the firm’s corporate department and counted American Airlines among a long list of high-profile clients. At the airline he will serve as CLO and executive vice president for corporate affairs, overseeing its legal affairs team with responsibility for legal and labour relations strategy. He will also be responsible for corporate governance, commercial, litigation, antitrust, compliance, environmental and IP matters. Richmond is due to take up his new role on 5 May.
Fort Worth-based American Airlines is the world’s largest airline by passenger numbers and daily flights.
Robert Isom, American Airlines’ CEO, said: “Tony has been an important advisor to our airline for more than 15 years, and we are excited to have him step into this critical leadership role. Given his knowledge of our team, our airline and the industry, this will be a seamless transition. We look forward to all the great things Tony and our legal team will do for American in the years to come.”
Richmond leaves Latham after almost 30 years, in that time serving as co-chair of its retail and consumer products industry group and latterly chairing its audit committee.
Aiyar, meantime, announced her departure in February to take up the CLO role at Warner Brothers Discovery. She had spent five-and-a-half years at American Airlines, originally joining as general counsel in 2019 from Willkie Farr & Gallagher where she was a partner.
She also had spells in government, serving as acting GC at the US Department of the Treasury, deputy GC for environment and nuclear programmes at the US Department of Energy, and as a legal advisor to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. She previously worked in private practice at Kellogg Huber Hansen Todd Evans & Figel.
In other airline moves, last July JetBlue Airways re-hired former associate GC Eileen McCarthy as its new legal head from UiPath. And last May, Southwest Airlines promoted its legal VP Jeff Novota to GC after its long-time legal chief Mark Shaw said he was stepping down from the role.
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