Howard Kourik, the recipient of Walker's tongue-lashing when the network went down in 1995 and later McCarran's IS director, describes the incident as "a defining moment in my understanding of his modus operandi--you keep things working, and I'll tell you how much you can spend to do it."
Kourik, now director of IT at San Diego International Airport, describes Walker as more tech-aware than any other boss he has worked for. "He always wanted to understand the implications of spending different amounts of money," Kourik says.
It helps that Walker has IT experience. As an accountant working for Exxon Oil Co. in the late 1970s, he was trained as a computer programmer and developed mainframe applications for two years. "I worked on the biggest, newest, fastest IBM machine at the time--the IBM 333. I think it's in the museum now," he says. "But at least I got an appreciation for the ability of the computers to automate things and make things more efficient."
Throughout the IT department's rise to prominence in the past decade, Walker has been its biggest fan and harshest critic. At either extreme, one thing has always been certain: He keeps a close eye on what the tech folks are doing. He's even tough when he describes his own thinking about glitches like the one that downed the network those years ago: "It has to be unique. It has to be unforeseen. And it better not happen twice the same way."
Experts point out that central control has been effective not only for the airlines and their passengers but also for IT management, which has lost only a few staffers in recent years, even as turnover became a problem for IT shops in the late 1990s. Remember that the next time your CEO threatens to fire you for attempting to save money.
