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Post by swanyone on May 31, 2012 4:06:42 GMT
Greetings! I came across this picture of an old People Express 727. I think this is a great looking 1970s-1980s style paint scheme. Would anyone be kind enough to take on a repaint of this fine looking jet? i147.photobucket.com/albums/r293/VIEWLINER/0906/PEX2.jpgThank you in advance! ;D ;D ;D ;D |
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Post by Tony Madge - HJG on May 31, 2012 13:33:37 GMT
Thats interesting, ok on my list  |
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Post by thegetter on May 31, 2012 14:29:06 GMT
Gotta Love PEOPLExpress! If I remember right,It was $59 peak & $39 off peak between Jax and Newark. Use to pay onboard. TheGetter!  |
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Post by swanyone on May 31, 2012 15:51:15 GMT
Oh yeah, no frills to the bone! They eventually operated a few 747s on overseas flights. If I recall they charged $149 for a coach seat from Newark to Gatwick. I think their ultra no-frills ended up sinking them...... Tony, thank you for putting this one on your list......I can't wait to see it!  |
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Post by thegetter on Jun 1, 2012 11:34:58 GMT
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Post by swanyone on Jun 1, 2012 18:53:26 GMT
Thegetter, I didn't realize that People Express was such a highly debated and analyzed company. It sounds like they had some really good and innovative ideas along with some odd management practices. It's really too bad they couldn't have a winning combination for long term survival. Perhaps if they'd reigned in their growth and stuck to the undeserved markets? Who knows.....
Thank you for posting the links to those videos, I really enjoyed watching them!
swanyone
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Post by thegetter on Jun 2, 2012 0:24:32 GMT
Just my opinion. We went from regulation to deregulation and now "PAYREGULATION". TheGetter! |
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Post by swanyone on Jun 2, 2012 5:30:42 GMT
That's a perfect summary!
Swanyone
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Post by christrott on Jun 2, 2012 6:19:41 GMT
People Express was so highly debated because of the ties between it and "Bozo" Frank Lorenzo. The guys who started PEX were the same ones who were part-and-parcel to Franks hijinks at Texas International and then Continental. It was only fitting that they then ended up back with Continental just in time to help Lorenzo to run Continental into bankruptcy not once, but twice.
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Post by swanyone on Jun 2, 2012 8:04:06 GMT
The "debated and analyzed" I was referring to was the coverage and discussion of their business model/strategy in the video links TheGetter posted. But, no Frank Lorenzo was not popular with some folks (mainly unions...do they actually like any management types?). Bob McAdoo was the PE CFO and went on to start Vanguard Airlines. From what I saw and new of him during my time there (including speaking with him) he seemed like a straight-forward and honest guy. They couldn't have all been bad right? |
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Post by christrott on Jun 2, 2012 15:38:09 GMT
Bob came from outside the Lorenzo camp and wasn't part of all those problems. That's his only saving grace and why he wasn't included in any of the civil lawsuits filed when PEX was "bought" by Continental.
Frank Lorenzo was despised by everyone, not just the unions. He is the only CEO in airline history (and as far as I know any industry) to purposely run a company into bankruptcy twice basically "just because". The accounting procedures were illegal, and Frank Lorenzo has been banned from aviation for a reason. He's one of only 2 people I'm aware of who are banned (by court order) from an entire industry because of their malfeasance. The other is Peter Tishma, the former CEO of PapaTango.
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Post by swanyone on Jun 2, 2012 16:09:54 GMT
Wow, it sounds like you don't like him either! Actually, he took Continental into bankruptcy to void the union contracts after negotiations for concessions failed. I understand the need to reduce costs; and labor is one of the highest for any industry. Unfortunately, labor means people....and when you're dealing with unions it can get ugly (on both sides). A bankrupcy judge removed him from his job at Eastern because of the tactics he used there. He made the unions so mad that when he filed papers to start Friendship Airlines the DOT denied him because the unions threw a royal fit. They protested until the DOT rejected the application. The vast majority of people who dislike Lorenzo ARE union and because of his union busting policies and actions. Others (business and analyst types) acknowledge that Continental survived because of the bankruptcies. It did allow them to emerge a leaner operation with lower costs. The pros and cons of his actions (there are definitely both) can be debated until the end of time.....but probably not in the repaint request thread. BTW, McAdoo's saving grace was that he's a good guy (not a good track record of running airlines though) |
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Post by christrott on Jun 3, 2012 6:24:24 GMT
The end of the day, Lorenzo was removed by federal court order from Continental and banned from the industry. Not because of just the unions. The second bankruptcy was simply because he didn't like that Denver wasn't going to allow Continental to use Stapleton as a maintenance base and he'd been such a poor negotiator that he couldn't back out of the lease for Concourse A that he'd signed. So he bankrupted the company (illegally) and that's what got him in so much trouble.
Union busting or not, his problem was his accounting tactics. They were illegal as hell and it finally caught up with him.
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Post by 707fan06 on Jun 3, 2012 15:14:50 GMT
People Express is like another Braniff - they rapidly develops but their income cannot cope with how fast they rapid devolpment . If they still exist today and they develop with consideration to their income, i believe they will be the number one low cost airline
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Post by swanyone on Jun 3, 2012 16:42:45 GMT
Discussing the merits/demerits of Lorenzo's tactics are one thing, but facts are facts ;D ;D Here are a few corrections (I even went and looked them up to reference instead of just going off of my vast memory banks  ): The end of the day, Lorenzo was removed by federal court order from Continental and banned from the industry. Not because of just the unions. ] [The second bankruptcy was simply because he didn't like that Denver wasn't going to allow Continental to use Stapleton as a maintenance base and he'd been such a poor negotiator that he couldn't back out of the lease for Concourse A that he'd signed. So he bankrupted the company (illegally) and that's what got him in so much trouble. Union busting or not, his problem was his accounting tactics. They were illegal as hell and it finally caught up with him. That's actually incorrect, he was removed from Eastern not Continental by a bankruptcy court judge at the request of Eastern's creditors who were continuing to lose money. The labor troubles at Eastern are well documented and helped lead to its demise. The airline was in trouble well before Texas Air and Lorenzo took it over. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_LorenzoThe first bankruptcy at Continental was because the airline was losing money. A major part of the problem was that they couldn't make any headway in reducing labor costs due to stalled negotiations. At that time, labor laws were different and at the time and union contracts could be voided in a bankruptcy. Continental was able to emerge from the bankruptcy a leaner and cheaper company. Lorenzo sold his controlling stake in Continental to SAS in August of 1990 (part of the the deal was for Lorenzo to leave the company). Continental filed for bankruptcy a second time in December 1990 (Lorenzo wasn't there anymore). Reasons cited are: high jet fuel prices and low demand from the lead up to the 1991 Gulf War, Lorenzo was highly occupied with Eastern, and People Express being a highly leveraged purchase. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Airlines#Acquisition_by_Texas_Air_Corporation_.281981.E2.80.931982.29The new CEO of Continental, Gordon Bethune, was the one who dealt with the issues in Denver. DIA has much higher costs than Stapleton did and as a result Continental decided to cut service from a hub to just servicing IAH, EWR, and CLE. It was a decision by the management and board, not by Lorenzo since he departed the company in 1990. In fact, the FAA inquired into the financial status of Texas Air (holding company for Continental, Texas International, Frontier, People Express, and Eastern) and found it to meet their requirements (although they did fine Eastern over 800k for safety violations). Let's face it, like him or not, Continental would not have survived as long as it did without him! It's hard to sort through the hatred of the man to look at the reasoning behind the decisions. People seem to have this misconception that to be anti union means that you're anti people. I don't think that's the case with most executives. Lorenzo took down some unions that were far too powerful. When a union tries to squeeze every lost drop out of a company to the point that the company cannot exist anymore, what good is that union? Where's the precious union when the company goes out of business? For Continental to survive something had to be done. Having those contracts voided while in bankruptcy helped to fix their problems. Rest assured, however, that the unions at Eastern weren't going to allow that same thing to happen to them. The machinest union (IAM) were already in a heated dispute with the previous CEO, Frank Borman, prior to Lorenzo's arrival. Yes, Frank Lorenzo is hated because of what he did to the unions (right in some opinions, wrong in others). By the time he was removed from Eastern he (and his opponents) had made quite a reputation for him in the industry. Swanyone |
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