AVIATION MERGERS - The Rise and Fall of Airlines after Deregulation

how do the airlines in this photo from 1984 connect to these airlines in a photo from 2021 we're going to tell you in this episode of celebrating aviation with mike machet we're going to take you back to the dawn of the jet age when airports like lax seen in this futuristic rendering gave a promise of amazing air travel by jet airliners in the future and in 20 years we started seeing a trend that was just unexpected mergers in aviation were they really survival of the fittest let's find out i had the occasion to work for a company that had been merged my dream from the time i was a kid was to work for the douglas aircraft company as a aviation artist and that dream came true in 1977 but by that time the company was called mcdonald douglas and it was two different worlds it was an interesting experience would you buy a used jet from this man yeah i got involved in a lot of corporate activities and it was a great 10-year run i really enjoyed it but uh there were times where it was like working for two two different companies for instance here's my uh company badge nice hair and uh you can see the two names uh on the badge the douglas aircraft company at the top mcdonald douglas corporation at the bottom and depending on which department i was interacting with uh it could be a very different experience it was kind of the classic us and them mindset but the reason for that is that the mcdonald corporation built incredible aircraft but they were military fighters for the air force navy and marines like this legendary f4 phantom 2 they were headquartered in st louis missouri and douglas was in long beach california and they were building airliners by that time the dc-8 series and the difference between a fixed price military contract or selling airliners was night and day the douglas company had built a reputation based on very deep personal friendships like here you see the united president pat patterson with donald w douglas but this was an era where airline presidents like juan tripp or c.r smith or eddie rickenbacker could literally order 20 jets over the phone that was a very different way of doing business from the military side to get a better understanding let's take a look at the douglas logo this is the very first logo from the 1920s and the slogan first around the world came from three airplanes that circumnavi navigated the globe for the very first time in 1924 that's represented by the three airplanes you see circling the earth in the logo these were the douglas world cruisers uh big rugged uh biplanes five airplanes began three uh made it all the way around the world one airplane was lost in a weather accident the other uh was lost at sea being towed by a navy cruiser miraculously there was no loss of life it was an amazing feat of airmanship the trip took six months 62 stops was an amazing event but it really put douglas on the map so this became their first logo and those three airplanes were always symbolic through the war years world war ii the logo eventually morphed into the space age and there's those three airplanes again now they're jets uh and the orbit around the earth is a missile so that uh trip went from six months to 90 minutes in uh about six decades the mcdonnell douglas corporation was formed in april of 1967 and now you can see the logo the orbit is still there the missile has a little delineation because they were now dealing with spacecraft satellites whether it was a warhead or whatever and the three airplanes became one sst type airliner the reason i mention this is take a good look at the logo you have the earth the orbit and the airplane and in 1997 that logo became this quite a connection to the 1924 flight of the world cruisers so how many brand new aircraft designs were produced by the mcdonald douglas corporation at long beach in the 30 years from 1967 to 1997. was it two four six airplanes eight maybe nine what do you think brand new designs that went into production at long beach in the 30 years between 67 and 97. you ready there's only two the first was the dc-10 and technically this was a douglas airplane it started in 1966 but credit where credit is due wouldn't have been built without the merger so it is a mcdonald douglas dc-10 the second airplane is the c-17 which is the very final airplane ever built in long beach and the final fixed-wing manned airplane ever built in the state of california but that's another story a trivia question what does the c-17 and the dc-10 have in common both airplanes use the exact same windshield all the rest of the airplanes built in those 30 years were derivatives they were either the military version of a commercial airliner like the c9 that you see on the left which was a dc 930 built for the air force navy and marines and on the right you have the kc-10 extender a aerial tanker version of the dc 1030 uh 60 were built and they're still in service today all the rest of those airplanes that were manufactured at long beach were derivatives of the dc-9 and the dc-10 the dc-9 super 80 that you see at lower left was the grandfather of a whole series of advanced dc-9s the md-88 the 87 the md-90 was the longest of the series and the md 95 was renamed the 717 after the boeing merger and that was the final airliner built in long beach on the lower right you see the md-11 which was an extended fuselage upgraded engine version of the dc-10 on the military side the company had acquired two british designs that upper left you see the harrier which uh that's an av-8a in the photo that evolved into the av-8b for the marines and at lower right you've got the t-45 a long beach project from the the old a4 days and that's the navy trainer that evolved from the bae hawk in the united kingdom but let's take a look at commercial aviation that's what i'm going to focus on for this program and douglas certainly was king of the hill in the 1950s here you see a dc-7 first-class lounge and by the jet age there was the promise of all this luxury the cathedral ceilings and eight foot wide aisles and and that sort of thing but it was a promise of a very special era in air travel which did happen in the early 1960s but something else was going on it was a very different industry back then it was highly regulated these were the four main carriers in the united states on top you have the two flag carriers which served international routes from the east and west coasts you had pan-american world airways and trails world airways twa also flew domestically as did united and american but the point i want to make here is that if you were going to a certain city you were going to be on a certain airline the regulations were very strict as far as airfare the routes they flew and so for instance if you were going to go to denver or chicago you'd be on united if you're going to dallas you'd be on american kansas city or st louis was twa again from either coast and then you'd have the regional airlines eastern western southern north central and they would serve the medium range routes in those regions of the country and in 1978 all of that changed the airline deregulation act under uh the carter administration sought to increase competition and lower airfares and it certainly did that but it also set up a kind of a free-for-all and uh a good visual would be the comparison from the regulated era that you see here to deregulation which was just chaos all different airlines were flying all different routes there were fair wars all over the place and at the end of uh a decade of that nearly 100 airlines had either gone bankrupt or been formed and gone bankrupt it was just an amazing wrenching time for anyone working in the industry for instance at douglas we had a special what we call the deregulation package deal we would sell you a pre-owned low mileage dc-9 flown only on sundays by a little old lady and that would include a color scheme work up a complete flight and cabin crews full maintenance package full training program but wait there's more we throw in your own bankruptcy lawyer it was kind of a gag but it made a point because that's what was going on about that time some airlines even those with proud histories like eastern simply went under and disappeared as did braniff and uh i couldn't mention the end of granite without telling the story of the uh the great pumpkin the big r 747 that they flew from dallas to hawaii when the airline was officially closed down they radioed all the airplanes in the air to land immediately at the closest airport and at that moment the great pumpkin was flying over lax at 39 000 feet on its way to honolulu and the captain basically said i have 350 people in the back who paid good hard-earned money to go to hawaii they're going to hawaii what are they going to do fire me well i thought the winner of the most merged airlines making a carrier today was american and they're close they were composed of many other companies some of which you see here psa and air cal from the west coast u.s airways which itself came from allegheny and mohawk twa which had acquired ozark and so a lot of different companies leading up to american i recently flew on an american airbus a321 and one of the trays in the galley was stamped u.s airways so it just just goes to show but the winner is delta the most airlines in its history so let's take a look delta began as the huftalon dusters a crop dusting operation in louisiana in the 1920s and evolved into a really first class passenger operation based in atlanta georgia here we see the dc-4 their first acquisition was chicago and southern it's beautiful uh 749 connie and in 1953 delta acquired cns by the jet age they were looking to expand and so they bought northeast which was a good match because that was an airline that primarily went from the new england cities to uh florida and again this beautiful conver 880 but northeast is best known for the yellow birds and this is uh dc9 in that scheme delta acquired northeast in 1972. if you're not familiar with the yellow birds that was a series of aircraft designed by the legendary industrial designer raymond loewy and it was a very popular scheme fabulous service i got to fly on the dc9 and the 727 both very memorable flights wonderful folks a really really outstanding airline and as i said that became delta in 72. delta acquired hughes air west in 1980 and that gave him a lot of west coast cities that was further augmented by their acquisition of western airlines in 1987 and this seemed ironic but the great pan american world airways was on its last legs in the late 1980s the competition was just giving them a a real solid run for their money and by that time pan am was looking for a merger and lo and behold delta acquired pan-american in 1991. final acquisition was northwest in 2010 northwest became part of delta but there's more to the story let's go back to pan am uh pan am itself had merged with national which uh was kind of the beginning of a lot of problems for the airline hugh's air west had been air west before it was bought by howard hughes and airwest was composed of pacific airlines west coast airlines and bonanza northwest had acquired republic and republic was composed of north central and southern so you get a pretty good idea of the number of companies from all around the country that were eventually merged to form delta airlines let's go back to that photo you saw at the very beginning this is lax in 1984 you can see the hollywood sign off in the distance and the airlines that are represented are continental western republic and psa and in the foreground at the left is museer dc nine super 80 museer was acquired by southwest became trans star and that lasted all of two years before they went under so with the exception of museer all the airlines you see in this photo have become part of these airlines today delta united and american so there you have it a look back at the airline industry before all the mergers uh quite frankly uh as romantic as those times were we've come very very far in terms of technology safety reliability navigation the technology today is just incredible but what has suffered unfortunately and i can say this from experience as recently as last week the service on board uh especially in the covent era to be fair air travel has become nothing more than the aerial component of mass transit so it's a different era but we remember all emerged airlines very fondly and all the wonderful people who work for him i hope you enjoyed this episode of celebrating aviation with mike machet as always special thanks to the late craig kadera and john proctor my dear friend jeff thomas and the good folks at the museum of flying until next time take care you

Channel: Celebrating Aviation with Mike Machat

Views: 15,534

Keywords: airlines, airliners, mergers, deltaairlines, americanairlines, usairways, allegheny, mohawk, hughesairwest, airwest, bonanza, pacificairlines, twa, ozark, northwestairlines, westernairlines, northeastairlines, northeastyellowbirds, northcentralairlines, jetairliner, jetliner, aviation, airplanes

Id: noFxbsqVjf8

Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021