United CEO Munoz will not chair board in 2018 following passenger removal

By Alana Wise

NEW YORK (Reuters) - United Continental Holdings Inc said on Friday Chief Executive Oscar Munoz will not become chairman in 2018, under an amendment to his employment agreement approved after an uproar over the treatment of a passenger.

In a reversal of his earlier employment agreement, Munoz has opted to leave "future determinations related to the Chairman position to the discretion of the Board," United said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The company also said it would revise its 2017 executive compensation to more directly tie incentives to improvements in customer satisfaction.

"United's management and the Board take recent events extremely seriously, and are in the process of developing targeted compensation programme design adjustments to ensure that employees' incentive opportunities for 2017 are directly and meaningfully tied to progress in improving the customer experience," the filing said.

Earlier this month, an elderly United passenger, Dr. David Dao, was dragged from his seat off a parked plane at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport bound for Louisville, Kentucky, to make room for crew members.

The scene was captured on video by fellow passengers, showing Dao, 69, bloodied and dishevelled in the incident. It sparked global outrage and calls from social media users in the United States, Vietnam and China to boycott the carrier.

(Reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by Richard Chang)