Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos

The self-destruction of Continental Airlines vividly revealed a principle as old as passenger flight itself: people will tolerate many sacrifices to fly, but they will not tolerate surprise.

Braniff’s powerful hub vividly demonstrated another inviolate rule of the airline business: Whoever has the most flights from a city gets a disproportionate share of the passengers. Frequency enhanced convenience—the convenience of flying the day of your meeting, not the night before; the convenience of arriving just an hour before your business wa

Southwest’s new intrastate route was readily approved, and suddenly, at the nice round figure of $25 each way, Southwest was carrying close to a thousand people a day where Texas International had been lucky to carry a few hundred at $40. Before long, passengers from Mexico were coming over International Bridge in droves to seize the low fares. Har

Other airlines, ordering whatever happened to be the new or sexy or cool plane of the moment, invariably wound up with many species of aircraft in their fleets. Southwest, by contrast, flew only 737s, requiring it to stockpile parts and train pilots and mechanics for only one kind of plane. The efficiencies were huge. Now, instead of rushing out to

But Delta delivered for its employees. Delta people got jobs for life; the company had not laid off a soul in 34 years. There had been no BOHICA, no concessions, no b-scales. Delta paid its people exceptionally well, not only by the standards of the low-wage southern United States but by airline industry standards as well. On the initiative of the

Kelleher did harbor a flaw, however, one that was so obvious no one could appreciate it. He had made Southwest Airlines a one-man show.

phone at People Express told him that either there remained unrequited demand for cheap flights over the Atlantic or the service being provided was incompetent. Either way there was an opening.

In the unwritten rules of the post-deregulation era, three major airlines operating within a single hub city was at least one too many. As American had displayed in Dallas, operating a hub had become a contest to control the maximum number of passengers between the maximum number of city pairs. This strategy demanded a huge number of airplanes flyi

The passenger was deemed paramount; every employee’s paycheck bore the words, “From our customers.”