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

Southwest will not tolerate customers who abuse their staff. They would rather those customers fly on a different airline. It’s a subtle irony that one of the best customer service companies in the country focuses on its employees before its customers. The trust between the management and the employees, not dogma, is what produces the great custome

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So while flying mail was quite profitable for airlines, carrying passengers wasn’t. Unlike passengers, mail doesn’t care about a comfortable seat or a reasonable cabin temperature or arriving on time. Brady estimated that by the late 1920s mail was six times more profitable to carry than passengers. Though some airlines did sell seats to the public

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Until deregulation. Small changes that improved efficiency and lowered costs—not glamorous, kind of boring—suddenly became the key to survival. Those S-type loonshots, nurtured by startups like Southwest or major carriers like Bob Crandall’s American, spread quickly through the industry. They annihilated every unprepared airline. Pan Am began the s

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