Airline Purchased By Twa In 1986

Remember when Ozark ruled the skies

Have you ever wondered why swallows were chosen to grace the tail of the green and white planes that made up the Ozark Air Lines fleet? According to Fred Moore, president of the Silver Swallows Alumni, the birds represented safe flight and timeliness, traits associated with both Ozark and the legendary Swallows of Capistrano. But perhaps the similarities do not end there.

According to swallow enthusiast, Avianna Marie Jones, Ph.D., swallows are "exceptional community members."

That sounds very much like the Silver Swallows I met recently at a gathering of the Retired Ozark Members Eating Out (ROMEO) Club. As I chatted with pilots, mechanics, flight attendants and other Ozark personnel, one message was repeated, again and again: "We are family!"

Frank Kenchel, age 86, who worked as an Ozark mechanic from 1959-1986, explained, "We looked out for each other and took care of each other the same way we took care of our customers."

"We took pride in our service and did whatever was needed to make our flights pleasant trips for everyone," recalled Wayne Kelley, age 74, who was Ozark's manager of Customer Service Training. "You should have seen the food we put out when sports teams flew with us."

Captain Herb Ebe, age 78, laughed at the memory.

"There were always three meals prepared for each passenger — steak, lobster and fried chicken. There were always leftovers, but at the end of each flight, the fried chicken was always gone. At one time, Ozark was the largest sports charter in the country," he said.

"Every baseball team except the Dodgers flew with us," Kelley added.

"College teams, too," Ebe said.

Of course, it wasn't only athletes who received star treatment on Ozark flights. Passengers, too, were treated to "Flair" food service, including the air lines' very popular Wine & Cheese flights.

"We had customers who flew to Florida just be part of our wine tasting flights," Ebe said.

"Flying was different back then," said Moore, who worked for Ozark Air Lines from 1968-1986 and for TWA until 1997.

Former flight attendant Judy Scott agreed. "Flying was an occasion," she said. "People used to get dressed up for their flights." And passengers weren't the only ones dressing for the occasion.

According to Scott, the flight attendant uniform with its "overseas hat that sat down low on your forehead" was one of the reasons she choose her career. Her other inspiration was her dad. "He used to take me to Lambert to watch the planes take off .

Blogging at FL250: We'll Never See its Likes Again

Just over ten years ago, one of the most storied names in aviation disappeared forever. It was April 9, 2001, an inappropriately sunny day for a wake in St. Louis. Thousands of employees gathered in a cavernous hangar, many wearing the “Two Great Airlines, One Great Future” ballcaps being handed out at the entrance. Burgers and brats were consumed en masse. A Boeing 777 and a Lockheed Constellation stood just outside the hangar, nose-to-nose, and many toured these pinnacles of their respective ages. It was a bittersweet day. Nobody but the bean counters really wanted the merger, but most thought it was a better outcome than liquidation, a real possibility considering the airline’s meager and waning cash reserves. A thousand miles away, Mohammed Atta and his compatriots were preparing the attack that would put the vast majority of these people out of work and turn STL into a virtual ghost town, but nobody knew that at the time. Transcontinental and Western Airlines was itself the product of a 1930 merger between Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express. T&WA inherited a transcontinental route structure from TAT, and a visionary named Jack Frye from Western Air Express. Frye was the man who delivered to Douglas Airlines the specifications for the DC-1, and later the DC-2 and DC-3. In 1939, Howard Hughes invested in the airline, later becoming the majority owner. Hughes ordered the fleet of Lockheed Constellations that would make the new Trans World Airlines moniker no great exaggeration. Overseas expansion began after WW2 and continued steadily for 40 years. TWA was late in ordering jets at the end of the 1950s but they did become the first all-jet airline with the retirement of the Connies in 1967. Two years later, TWA surpassed PanAm in transatlantic traffic and opened Pacific routes to create a true round-the-world route structure. In the 1970s, they developed an extensive intra-Europe network using B727s, even maintaining pilot bases in major European cities. As one of the most visible American symbols abroad, they became a favorite target of terrorist hijackers and bombers through the 1970s and into the 1980s. By 1988, TWA was carrying over 50% of all transatlantic passengers. It was a dominance that would not last long. Deregulation and the LBO craze of the 1980s turned TWA into a target for corporate raiders. In 1985, unwanted attention from Frank Lorenzo drove the board of directors into the arms of Carl Icahn. He turned out to be every bit as destructive a force as Lorenzo. Icahn sold off TWA’s most valuable assets to competitors, in particular their prized London route authorities to American Airlines. Icahn financed a 1986 purchase of Ozark Airlines by selling their fleet of DC-9s to lessors, then torpedoed the intra-Europe route structure in 1989 by signing DC-9 leases that prohibited operation outside the continental United States. Icahn wasn’t ousted until 1993, by which time he had transferred hundreds of millions of dollars from TWA into his own accounts. It took a bankruptcy to get rid of him, as well as a poisonous deal that would ultimately contribute to TWA’s downfall. TWA agreed to sell Icahn’s Karibu Corporation an unlimited number of tickets at 45% off the lowest published fare for ten years, excluding tickets originating or terminating in STL. It was a bitter pill to swallow in 1993, and became even more punishing in subsequent years as internet-based ticket sales soared. Icahn sold the tickets through lowestfare.com, and TWA could not compete. Karibu cost them an estimated $150 million per year. TWA went into bankruptcy a second time in 1995, and still couldn’t get the Karibu agreement terminated. The company fought hard for survival. They reorganized their domestic structure around St Louis to help counter Karibu. The unions gave huge concessions. Employees actually bought an MD-83 and donated it to the company. TWA pilot Bill Compton took over as CEO, continuing to fly the line once a month. TWA was on the verge of profitability when a bare wire in a B747-131’s center fuel tank sparked disaster just off Long Island. Passengers deserted the airline in droves. By the turn of the millennium, TWA was a ghost of its former self. Their aging B747s and L1011s had all been sold in the aftermath of TWA800, and only a few transatlantic routes remained. They still had a major presence in JFK at their iconic Terminal 5, but otherwise had retrenched to St Louis. Even in the bountiful days of the late 1990s, TWA was losing money, and by the fall of 2000 they were down to under $150 million in the bank. It’s hard to say, then, what moved me to apply for an internship with TWA for the spring semester of 2001. I knew a girl in St Louis; she turned out to be nutty and drove me to drinking, but I liked her at the time. I had utterly burned myself out flying over the previous summer at UND and needed to get away from Grand Forks. Perhaps it was misplaced affection for the underdog. I said as much in the interview: “It’s do or die time for TWA. I’d like to be part of ‘do.’” It was either a winning line or there was a shortage of applicants lining up to intern for an airline apparently on the verge of collapse. As it turned out, I worked for TWA for all of three days before they announced a third bankruptcy and purchase by American Airlines. For the remainder of the spring, I got to know a dying airline that had become a husk of itself, still living on the memory of past glory. What remained was a core of absolutely fantastic people and a singularly unique culture. At the time, I had no airline experience; I didn’t realize just how wonderfully different TWA was until well afterward. When busy line pilots enthusiastically welcomed a lowly intern onto their jumpseat and treated me like a V.I.P., I didn’t know how overinflated egos complicate jumpseat politics at other airlines. When matronly flight attendants who had been flying since Kennedy was President tried to ply me with booze and set me up with their cute granddaughters, I never thought that other airlines’ “cat ranchers” might have a markedly different reputation. When my boss in Training Systems Development insisted that I take a week off to travel as a reward for work well done, I didn’t think much of it. When I met the retired TWA Captain in his 80s who still volunteered as a goodwill ambassador at LAX, I assumed all airlines had similarly loyal employees who couldn’t bear to say goodbye…and figured they would all be happy to have the extra help. When I helped a group of frequent fliers throw an unofficial farewell party in the old STL Ambassador’s Club, I guessed that most businessmen would get a little teary-eyed over the demise of their airline of choice. At the Hilton in Cairo, Egypt, a very senior B767 Captain reached into his pocket and rented me a dayroom against my wishes because he recognized that a very jetlagged youngster on his first trip outside North America might do something stupid roaming the streets of a third world country. His parting words to me were, “Someday I hope to see you in the left seat. When that day comes, I want you to remember this lesson: always, always take care of your crew.” I took his words to heart and yearned for the day when I could fly with such wise old birdmen and learn from their wealth of experience.

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