United Airlines taps ex-American CCO Vasu Raja as consultant for Kinective Media

United Airlines has hired Vasu Raja, the former Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of American Airlines, to help with its Kinective Media business temporarily.

As first reported by The Airline Observer, United Airlines has appointed new executives to its loyalty and advertising businesses, including the hiring of Raja to consult on the airline’s Kinective Media platform.

Raja, who left American Airlines in June 2024, following a bold but controversial sales strategy that has reverberated to this day, has been hired as a short-term consultant at Kinective Media.

In a statement to The Points Guy, Raja said that he looked forward to building the business and pushing it into “its next phase of growth.”

Raja will directly report to Andrew Nocella, the CCO of United Airlines.

What is Kinective Media?

United Airlines unveiled its Kinective Media business in June 2024, saying that it was the first media platform that used customer insights to connect them to “personalized, real-time advertising, content, experiences, and offers from leading brands.”

The platform enables brands to serve personalized ads to United Airlines’ customers during their travel journey while also allowing the airline to monetize, among other touchpoints, the 300 million hours its passengers spend each year watching in-flight entertainment (IFE).

When JetBlue and United Airlines announced their Blue Sky partnership in May 2025, the statement read that the former would become the “first partner airline to deploy and syndicate the technology” of Kinective Media.

What else has Raja been working on?

Since leaving American Airlines in June 2024, Raja has focused on launching his own business, Dihedral, with another former American Airlines executive, Jeffrey Katz. Katz has also held high-level roles at Sabre and Swissair, the predecessor of Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS).

Dihedral is a “secure data and modeling platform that connects enterprise data in real-time – without replacing existing systems – to deliver individualized customer experiences.”