What?
This idea was born out of @molp’s and my exploration of Football Manager to get some inspiration for the planned UI/UX overhaul of AirlineSim: As in many other management sims, FM allows you to hire management staff to automate certain parts of the business or (as far as I understand it) only enables certain features once the respective manager has been hired.
In AirlineSim, there are several places where this could make sense:
- Auto-Ops might only be available if a fleet or operations manager has been hired.
- Certain business units - think cargo, PSOs, own ground handling etc. - might require their own department heads.
- Opening own (vs. agent-run) stations in other countries might require country managers.
- Operating a transfer hub could require a hub manager.
- Certain distribution channels only open up once experts are on board.
- Automatic re-hiring of personnel, including management staff, requires a COO or similar.
- …and so on…
Managers are staff like any other, just for a specific position. This means, they belong to cohorts, they “have a mood” (is that correct English? 
), they have a certain level of experience, they can/must be trained and they might leave the company at any given time for various reasons. All of these factors might and will have an impact on their performance where this can be modelled in-game. For example, the quality of auto-ops might depend on the overall skill of the “Fleet Operations Managers” and their department and the likeliness of workers organising might be influenced by the people skills of your HR manager.
Hiring management staff would require picking from candidates with different skill and income levels. There might be a shared market of some sort, where airlines compete over talent. Although I will be extremely cautious about something like that because…markets are a challenge in AS.
Last but not least, managers might also help with general automations. Like hiring staff and setting up handling contracts at new bases, automatically scheduling heavy maintenance,
Why?
While typically a mechanic of single-player games, I feel like a feature like this could add a more “game’y feel” to AirlineSim, add new interesting interactions and provide a natural progression for new players as parts of the game become available over time once the respective staff has been hired.
Combined with a feature that allows certain operations up to a certain scale to be managed by the CEO alone (aka the player), larger airlines would naturally reach points at which their baseline operating costs increase due to the need for dedicated management staff. Examples: Once the workforce has crossed a certain threshold, an HR manager is mandatory. If you want to order more than X aircraft, you require a procurement manager. You get the idea.
When?
Besides relying on the basics of the reworked HR feature, this would likely make the most sense once the UI refresh and inductions are completed. The latter might actually be a great corresponding feature, as the respective induction might highlight the need for a dedicated manager.