Hard Landing (45 page)

The visionary Juan Trippe
(left)
launched Pan Am’s airmail service to South America in 1929, with Charles Lindbergh in the cockpit. “We have shrunken the Earth.”
(Smithsonian Institution)

Marketing genius C. R. Smith of American Airlines introduced jet travel to America in 1959. “We’re going to make a pile of extra dough just from being first.”
(American Airlines)

Herb Kelleher battled to launch Southwest Airlines in 1971. If the sheriff shows up with another injunction, he said, “leave tire marks in his back.”
(Southwest Airlines)

Dallas’s Love Field gave Southwest an operating base as well as a marketing identity. “How do we love you? Let us count the ways …”
(Southwest Airlines)

Taking control of Texas International in 1971, Frank Lorenzo soon became the industry’s youngest president at age thirty-two. Calling it “our little airline,” he would make it the nation’s largest. (
AP/Wide World Photos)

Robert Crandall roiled the industry after becoming Americans marketing chief in 1973. “Be ruthless. Be driven. Don’t let anything get in your way.”
(American Airlines)

Crandall’s deft internal politicking helped him win the presidency of American from chairman Al Casey
(left)
in 1980. When did Crandall first covet the job? “When I was born.”
(American Airlines)

Within days of Continental’s Chapter 11 in 1983, Phil Bakes excitedly details his rebuilding plans as a depressed Lorenzo looks on. “it’s your baby.” Lorenzo told him.
(AP/Wide World Photos)

Lorenzo’s 1980 creation of New York Air triggered a union hate campaign, including this billboard in Houston. “Runaway shop!”
(Courtesy of Dennis Higgins)

Ed Acker
(left)
announces that Pan Am will sell its historic Pacific routes to United in 1985, as Dick Ferris stifles his glee. “You can’t fucking believe it!” Ferris told an associate. “They want to do the Pacific deal!”
(AP/Wide World Photos)

Former astronaut Frank Borman announces the 1986 sale of Eastern to Lorenzo. “No one can run a company under these circumstances.”
(AP/Wide World Photos)

In 1986 Don Burr sold People Express to the rival of his life. Frank Lorenzo, catapulting Texas Air to number one. “Frank is capable of any kind of behavior to win.”
(AP/Wide World Photos)