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

In their heyday as a special industry, the airlines had carried on their business through a tedious, federally supervised process; it was as if the airlines were chess players required to clear their moves in advance with an arbiter committed to taking the contestants to a draw. In short order in 1978, for reasons that few fully understood at the t

The approach of deregulation awakened the company to the need to collect its own passengers within the United States, but by that time Pan Am had so alienated every branch of the U.S. government that no one in Washington was willing to say yes. Pan Am, as one historian noted, was “the only airline in the world without a country of its own.”

Inside the airline industry, however, everyone knew Southwest and only too well. It had never lost money, from the time it was fully established in business. And it had flourished while defying almost every success maxim of the post-deregulation world: it had no computer reservations system, offered no frequent-flier program, did not conduct yield

Just as Burr and his associates had made a virtue of the simplicity of peanuts fares back at Texas International, so too did People Express promote the simplicity of its fare structure; one series of ads showed a reservationist for the fictitious “BS Airlines” double-talking through a series of ludicrously complex restrictions. Even where the major

The union of devilish details and “godlike power,” as Lindbergh found in the act of flying, makes commercial aviation compelling for yet another reason: the anthropology of the executive suite. The men who run the airlines of America are an extreme type; calling them men of ego would be like calling Mount McKinley a rise in the landscape. Airlines

Increasing passenger traffic, Brown reasoned, was the one sure way to wean the airlines from postal subsidies. But public confidence could be inspired only by big, financially secure carriers committed to safety, maintenance, and training, not by the fly-by-night operators abounding at the time. Brown changed the rules so that the airlines received

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.

As he had planned, Burr grafted the systems and culture of People Express onto Frontier; the disaster was monumental. Frontier had always been considered a classy airline, and the years of warfare with United and Continental had only brought out the best in service at all three. Now longtime Frontier passengers were being charged 50¢ for a cup of c

Predictability—the fulfillment of expectations—is the most important factor in whether an airplane flight is a pleasantly efficient experience or one of modern life’s worst travails. This principle is doubly important on international flights.