Imagine this for a second. It's a 1965. You're
a business person in New York City and you need
to get to D .C. for a meeting. But you don't
have a ticket. You don't have a reservation.
No code on your phone. You haven't even talked
to a travel agent. That sounds, I mean, for a
modern traveler, that's basically a nightmare
scenario. You just show up at the airport with
no confirmation. You'd be sleeping in the terminal.
Exactly. But in this world, you just grab your
briefcase, you hail a cab to LaGuardia, and you
walk right up to a specific terminal. And you
just get on a plane. Just like that. Just like
that. And here's the part that sounds like complete
fiction. If you get to that gate. And the plate
is totally full. Every single seat. The airline
doesn't bump you. No voucher to fly tomorrow.
No voucher. They just roll out another jet. A
whole other airliner. They crew it. They fuel
it. And they fly it to your destination. Even
if you are the only soul on board. That sounds
impossible. It sounds like a business model designed
to just burn cash. But that was real. It was
real. That was the air shuttle. And it was just
standard procedure for a company that was at
one time a titan of American industry. We're
talking about Eastern Airlines. We are. And when
we say Titan, that's not an exaggeration. Today,
you know, we think of the big three, Delta, United,
American. But for a huge chunk of the 20th century,
Eastern was a charter member of the big four.
Oh, absolutely. They were the bedrock. To really
get the scale of Eastern, you have to understand
they weren't just a player in the market. For
decades, they were the market for anyone flying
from the Northeast to Florida. They owned the
East Coast. Massive brand recognition, huge assets,
a near monopoly on some of the most lucrative
routes in the entire world. And yet they completely
vanished. And that's the hook for today's deep
dive. We've got a massive stack of sources in
front of us. Fleet records, biographies of World
War I aces, NTSB accident reports, financial
autopsies. You name it. A little bit of everything.
Our mission today is to figure out how a company
goes from being the wings of man, sponsoring
Disney World, and just dominating the skies to
a chaotic sudden collapse in 1991. It's a real
tragedy in three acts. I mean, you've got the
rise under a war hero, this incredible period
of innovation, and then this slow, painful death
spiral of debt, labor wars, and corporate raiders.
It's got everything. Celebrity pilots, huge technological
gambles that just didn't pay off. And some just
bizarre stories. We have to talk about the Moonlight
specials. Oh, we will. And pranks with hidden
cameras. Yeah. So let's unpack this. We have
to start at the very beginning. Because before
it was a corporate giant, it was, well, you said
it earlier, it was basically a mail truck with
wings. That's a pretty fair description. To understand
Eastern, you have to go back to the late 1920s.
The company's DNA really starts with the three
smaller outfits, but the main one was Pitcairn
Aviation. Pitcairn Aviation. It just sounds like
a barnstorming name from an old movie. And it
essentially was. This guy, Harold Pitcairn, was
an aviation pioneer. In 1927, his company won
a government contract to fly mail between New
York and Atlanta. And we should probably clarify
for you listening. In the 1920s, airlines were
not... really about passengers. No, passengers
were just extra weight. A nuisance. They complained
they needed seats. Mailbags don't complain. Exactly.
The money was in government mail contracts. So
Pitcairn was flying these little mail wing biplanes,
open cockpits, pilots navigating by following
railroad tracks or literal bonfires on the ground.
It's just incredible to think that modern travel
started with guys in leather helmets freezing
in an open cockpit. So we've got mail planes.
How do we get from that to the Great Silver Fleet?
Well, as always money changes hands. The aviation
industry back then was like the dot -com boom.
Everyone was buying everyone. A guy named Clement
Keyes, who owned North American Aviation, bought
Pitcairn in 1929. Then, General Motors, yes,
the car company, buys North American. So by the
mid -30s, this little airline, now called Eastern
Airlines, is basically just a division of GM.
Which brings us to 1938 and the arrival of the
Ace. Eddie Rickenbacker. Eddie Rickenbacker.
Now, there's a name. This is a guy who almost
defies belief today. He was the ace of aces in
World War I, shot down 26 enemy aircraft, a Medal
of Honor recipient. And before all that, he was
a race car driver. Yes. He raced in the Indy
500 multiple times. He even owned the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway later on. The guy was just built
for speed and risk. But as a businessman, he
was. Surprisingly conservative. Incredibly conservative,
which is fascinating. So GM owns the airline
and Rickenbacker is running it for them. But
he wants to own it himself. Right. He doesn't
want some other company coming in and chopping
it up for parts. Exactly. In 1938, GM was under
some antitrust pressure from the government,
so they were looking to sell. Rickenbacker saw
his chance. So he goes to fundraise. And the
sources describe this. It's like a scene from
a movie. He walks in to see Alfred P. Sloan,
the head of GM. You can just picture it. The
heavy oak furniture, the cigar smoke. Rickenbacker
and his associate, Sidney Shannon, walk in. And
he doesn't offer a handshake deal or a promissory
note. He puts a certified check on the desk.
A check for $3 .5 million. Which, if you adjust
for inflation, is somewhere around $78 million
today. It was massive sum. He just hands it over.
Sloan takes it. And just like that, Eastern Airlines
is an independent company. And Rickenbacker is
in charge. He ran that airline with the same
discipline he'd use in a fighter cockpit. He
did. And under his leadership, Eastern became
the most profitable airline in the post -war
era. And fascinatingly, they never needed a state
subsidy. That was his whole thing. It was his
philosophy. He was a rugged individualist. He
famously said, I don't want a dime of the taxpayer's
money. He wanted to win on merit. Most airlines
back then survived on government handouts. Rickenbacker
refused. He built what he called the Great Silver
Fleet. Let's talk about that branding, the Great
Silver Fleet. It sounds so... elegant, but it
was really another one of his cost -cutting measures,
wasn't it? It was pure frugality. Rickenbacker
looked at the cost of painting a plane. Paint
has mass. It has weight. On a big aircraft like
a DC -4, a full coat of paint can weigh several
hundred pounds. And that's hundreds of pounds
of fuel you're burning on every single flight
just to carry the paint around. Precisely. So
Rickenbacker basically said, scrape it off. They
polished the aluminum skin of the planes until
it shone like a mirror. It looked incredible,
very futuristic. But the real reason was just
to save money on gas. And they absolutely dominated
that East Coast corridor. New York, Washington,
Atlanta, Miami. That geography is so crucial
to the whole story. We sometimes call it the
Golden Triangle. I mean, think about it. You
have the political capital in D .C., the financial
capital in New York, and the vacation capital
in Miami. Especially in the winter. The snowbirds.
If you were a wealthy New Yorker flying to Florida
in the 40s or 50s, you were almost certainly
flying Eastern. It was a cash cow. They basically
printed money on those routes. But, and there's
always a but, that conservative nature, that
same frugality that made them so profitable,
it eventually became a huge liability, didn't
it? It really did. This is a classic invaders
dilemma situation. Rickenbacker was a genius
at running a tight ship with piston engine planes.
But then came the jet age. The late 50s. The
Boeing 707. The Douglas DC -8. Right. And Rickenbacker.
Well, he was skeptical. He looked at these brand
new jets and just saw dollar signs. They were
incredibly expensive to buy, and the early ones
were fuel guzzlers. So his logic was, why would
I spend all this extra money just to fly people
to the same place a little faster? Exactly. He
completely underestimated how much the public
would love them. He thought people would be happy
to keep flying slower prop planes if the fare
was a few bucks cheaper. He bet on frugality
over speed. That seems like a massive miscalculation.
Speed is the entire point of air travel. In hindsight,
yes. Huge miscalculation. But at the time, jets
were unproven economically. But the public, they
voted with their wallets. They wanted the smooth
ride, the speed. They wanted pure jet service.
Which is what competitors like Delta and National
started advertising. And they started eating
into Eastern's market share fast. Which led to
Rickenbacker's ouster. It did. The board of directors
realized they were losing the future. By 1959,
he was pushed out as CEO, and by 63, the ace
was gone completely. The company had to change.
So Rickenbacker leaves, and we enter what I think
is the most culturally significant era for Eastern.
This is the 1960s and 70s, the Wings of Man era.
This is when they really try to reinvent themselves
as a modern, innovative carrier. They had to
play catch up on jets, but they also introduced
services that totally changed the industry. They
moved away from military discipline and hired
ad agencies. And Orson Welles to do the voiceovers.
The Wings of Man. It sounds so majestic. It did.
And it was backed up by real innovation. Let's
go back to that Eastern Airlines shuttle. I mentioned
it in the intro, but I want to really dig into
how this worked because it's just so unique.
It launched in 1961. The shuttle was. It was
revolutionary. Before this, flying was an event.
You booked weeks in advance. You dressed up.
Eastern looked at the business travel market
between New York, D .C. and Boston and said,
let's make it like taking a bus. Hourly flights
from 7 in the morning to 10 at night. And no
reservations needed. Think about the logistics
of that. No reservations. You'd walk into a special
terminal at LaGuardia. You wouldn't even go to
a ticket counter. You'd go straight to the gate,
pull a boarding pass out of a machine like you're
taking a number at the deli. And you'd just walk
on the plane. And payment happened in the air.
Yes. Once you were at cruising altitude, the
flight attendants would roll a cart down the
aisle, not with coffee, but with a cash box and
one of those old credit card imprinters. The
knuckle busters. They collected fares right there
in the air. That is just mind -boggling. But
the wildest part, the thing we mentioned, is
the guarantee. The 100 % seat guarantee. Their
promise was, if you showed up by a certain time,
you got a seat. Period. And they meant it. There's
this famous story, and it's absolutely true,
that on one busy weekend, a shuttle flight filled
up, and there was one single passenger left at
the gate. One guy. Today, they'd say, sorry,
there's another flight in an hour. Here's a $10
food voucher. Right. But Eastern, they pulled
a backup plane, a Lockheed Constellation, out
of the hangar. They called in a standby crew
that was just sitting in the lounge just in case.
They fueled it up, boarded that one guy, and
flew him to Washington. That is the ultimate
customer service flex. It must have cost them
a fortune. Thousands of dollars in 1960s money.
But think of the marketing value. That story
spread through the business community like wildfire.
It bought them unbelievable loyalty. For anyone
doing business on the East Coast, the shuttle
was the only way to travel. And they had the
look to match it. The hockey stick livery. Iconic.
One of the greatest of all time. Officially,
it was Caribbean blue over ionosphere blue. It
was this shape running up the tail that looked
just like a hockey stick. And I found this hilarious
detail. There were two versions because of that
old paint weight issue. Yes. Rickenbacker's frugality
lived on. They had the silver hockey stick fleet
where the main body of the plane was just unpainted,
polished metal, saved on weight. But then they
bought Airbus planes. Exactly. Eastern was the
first U .S. carrier to fly the Airbus A300. But
the A300 used composite materials, fiberglass,
carbon fiber. And you can't just polish composite.
The sun will degrade it. So they had to paint
the Airbus planes white. So you had the white
fleet and the silver fleet. Yep. If you saw a
silver plane, it was a Boeing or a Lockheed.
If it was white, it was an Airbus. Speaking of
branding, we have to talk about the mouse. Eastern
and Disney. A huge partnership. From 1971 to
1989, Eastern was the official airline of Walt
Disney World. Walt Disney World opened in Orlando
in 71, and Eastern was there from day one. Which
makes sense. They already owned the route to
Florida. True, but this just cemented it. They
sponsored a ride in the Magic Kingdom, if you
had wings. I remember reading about this. It
was in Tomorrowland, right? Where the Buzz Lightyear
ride is now. That's the one. It was one of those
Omnimover rides, like the Haunted Mansion. You'd
sit in these little plastic shells and just float
past dioramas of all the places Eastern flew.
Mexico, Puerto Rico, New Orleans. And that song.
Oh, that song. If you had wings, you could do
many things. It was a total earworm designed
to sell tickets to a captive audience. And the
ride was free, right? Yeah. Back then, Disney
had ticket books, you know, A through E tickets.
But the sponsored rides were free. So families
would just ride, if you had wings, over and over
again to sit in the air conditioning. It was
basically brainwashing an entire generation of
kids. So they have the business market with the
shuttle, the family market with Disney. And they're
also pushing the envelope. on the actual aircraft.
The Airbus A300, but the big one was the Lockheed
LT11 TriStar. The Whisperliner. Why Whisperliner?
It was called that because its engines, the Rolls
-Royce RB211s, were noticeably quieter than the
competition. It was a beautiful plane, a wide
body, three engines, one integrated right into
the tail with that graceful S -duct. It was technologically
way ahead of its time. But the development of
that plane was a total nightmare. It was an absolute
saga. Rolls -Royce, the engine maker, actually
went bankrupt trying to develop the RB -211.
It was too complex. They were trying to make
these carbon fiber fan blades that just kept
shattering when birds hit them. So the whole
L -1011 program was delayed for years. For years.
Eastern was stuck waiting for their planes. The
British government had to step in and nationalize
Rolls -Royce to save it. And Eastern specifically
had to hold the line. They could have bailed
and bought DC -10s? They could have, but they
stuck with Lockheed and Rolls -Royce. There's
a quote in our source material from Stanley Hooker,
a famous Rolls -Royce engineer. He said the RB
-211 program was saved by Eastern's steadfast
support. They inadvertently saved Rolls -Royce.
So they did the right thing, but it cost them.
While they were waiting, competitors were flying
747s and DC -10s and capturing the market. Exactly.
So we see this pattern. Innovation, but also
incredible risk. And that brings us to the next
big shift, the Borman era. We go from a World
War I ace to a space age hero. Colonel Frank
Borman, this guy wasn't just the CEO. He was
American royalty, West Point Air Force, NASA
astronaut. He commanded Apollo 8. The first mission
to orbit the moon. The man who read from the
book of Genesis as the Earth rose over the lunar
surface on Christmas Eve. That's the one. He
takes over Eastern in 1975. And he brings that
astronaut intensity with him. He moves the headquarters
from Rockefeller Center down to Miami -Dade.
And he changes the slogan to, we have to earn
our wings every day. Which feels a little more
greedy, a little less grand than the wings of
man. It reflected the reality of late 70s. The
economy was shaky. And the biggest threat of
all was on the horizon. Deregulation. We hear
that word a lot. Deregulation. Yeah. But what
did it actually mean for airlines? Before 1978,
the government basically treated airlines like
public utilities. An agency set the routes and
the prices. You couldn't really compete on price.
You competed on steak dinners and leg room. It
was stable, but expensive for the consumer. Right.
Deregulation just took the referee off the field.
Suddenly, any airline could fly anywhere and
charge anything they wanted. It was a free -for
-all. Total chaos. Low -cost carriers started
popping up. But Borman had a plan. And this plan
is fascinating because it was logical, it was
smart, and it was completely disastrous. This
is the oil bet. Exactly. In the late 70s, oil
prices were skyrocketing. Yeah. Everyone, and
I mean everyone from Wall Street to the White
House, thought fuel was just going to keep getting
more and more expensive. So Borman goes on this
huge shopping spree. He buys the Airbus A300s.
He becomes the launch customer for the Boeing
757, all because they were super fuel efficient.
And he took on massive debt to do it. We're talking
about a situation where Eastern was paying over
$700 ,000 a day. $700 ,000 a day? In interest?
Just in interest. Before selling a single ticket.
But his logic was, my debt will be high, but
my fuel bill will be low. My competitors will
be flying old, thirsty jets, and they'll go broke
buying gas. And then the exact opposite happened.
The bottom fell out of the oil market, the 1980s
oil glut. Prices didn't go up, they plummeted.
Oh, the irony. It's brutal. So now Eastern is
stuck with these massive debt payments for shiny
new planes, while new competitors like People
Express are buying old gas guzzlers for pennies
on the dollar and running them profitably because
fuel is cheap. It's a total disaster. He built
an airline for a high cost oil world and ended
up living in a low cost oil world. And he's fighting
a war on two fronts. He's got the low cost carriers
and he's got Delta. The Battle of Atlanta. Both
Eastern and Delta had huge hubs in Atlanta. They
were fighting for the same passengers. But Delta
had a better balance sheet and, crucially, a
much better relationship with its employees.
Eastern's workforce was heavily unionized and
very militant. And this financial pressure led
to some really weird experiments. We have to
talk about the Moonlight Specials. Laughing.
The Moonlight Specials. This was 1985. Eastern
was desperate for any revenue they could find.
They looked at their big A300 jets sitting on
the ground between midnight and 6 a .m. and said,
how can we make money with these? So they became
a cargo airline at night. Primarily cargo. Mail,
machine parts, textiles. But then they thought,
well, the plane's flying anyway. Why not put
people in the seats? So they created the Moonlight
Special, flights leaving around 1 in the morning.
And the passenger experience was... To say the
least. Because the cargo hold was full of, you
know, actual cargo, passengers were only allowed
two carry -on bags. If you wanted to check a
bag, it cost $10 and it flew standby. Your bag
might get there with you. It might get there
the next night. It was cargo first service. And
on board, they sold snacks for $0 .50. It was
gritty. And the demographics. We have this quote
here from a flight attendant. in the New York
Times. It's incredible. She described the passengers
as a cross -section of families, college kids,
illegal aliens, and weirdos from L .A. Weirdos
from L .A.? That just paints such a vivid picture.
It sounds like a Greyhound bus at 30 ,000 feet.
Pretty much. I mean, it generated some cash,
but it totally cheapened the brand. You go from
the Wings of Man to the Weirdos special in just
a few years, it just showed how desperate they
were. And alongside all this financial trouble,
there was the safety record. Eastern. had some
very high -profile incidents that really hurt
their reputation. They did, and unfortunately,
they're famous for one of the most studied crashes
in aviation history, Flight 401 in 1972. This
was the L -1011, the Whisperliner crash in the
Everglades. A brand -new, wide -bodied jet. They
were on approach to Miami. They lowered the landing
gear, but the little green light that confirms
the nose gear is down and locked. It didn't come
on. Just a burnt out light bulb. Most likely.
Just a $12 bulb. But the entire crew, the captain,
the first officer, the flight engineer, they
all got fixated on this one light. The captain
sent the engineer down into the avionics bay
under the cockpit to physically check if the
gear was down. And while this is all happening,
no one is flying the plane. They thought the
autopilot was. They'd set it to hold at 2 ,000
feet. But the captain, while turning to talk
to the engineer, probably bumped the control
yoke. And on the L -1011, that disengaged the
altitude hold. So the plane just started a slow,
gradual descent. Exactly. And because it was
a pitch black night over the Everglades, no lights
on the ground, no horizon, they never felt it.
They flew a perfectly functioning aircraft right
into the swamp. 101 people died. It was a horri
- Horrific, preventable tragedy. But it changed
aviation forever. It basically birthed the concept
of crew resource management, CRM. The idea that
crews need to communicate, that someone always
needs to be flying the plane. It's going. And
then you have the freak accidents, like Flight
611 in 1948. That one is terrifying. It was a
constellation flying over the ocean, and the
number three propeller just failed. A blade snapped
right off. And it didn't just fall away. No.
It flew back and sliced through the fuselage.
like a giant spinning knife. It cut the control
cables, cut the engine controls, and actually
killed a crew member instantly. Then the whole
engine fell off the wing. That plane should have
crashed. It absolutely should have. But the pilots
somehow managed to regain control and land it
safely. It just speaks to the incredible skill
of the pilots back then. And we can't ignore
the hijackings. The late 60s were the golden
age of hijackings to Cuba. It felt like it was
happening every week. Take me to Havana was a
catchphrase, but Eastern had one in 1969. That
was, well, it was bizarre. The prank hijacking.
A man stands up with what looks like a gun and
demands to go to Cuba, but sitting in the cabin
is Alan Funt. The host of Candid Camera. The
one and only. So the passengers, they see the
hijacker, then they look over and see Alan Funt
and they do the math. They start laughing. They
thought it was a TV sketch. They were convinced
it was a prank. They're looking around for the
hidden cameras. Funtz said it was the most terrifying
moment of his life because no one was taking
the danger seriously. It wasn't until they landed
in Havana and Cuban soldiers surrounded the plane
that everyone realized, oh, this is real. That
is just surreal. So you have this company that's
struggling with debt, fighting price wars, dealing
with these dramatic incidents. But the real death
knell that comes in the mid 80s. the sale to
Texas Air. This is where the story really turns
dark. Frank Borman, he can't fix the debt, he
can't fix the labor issues, and he agrees to
sell the airline in 1986. And the buyer is Texas
Air Corporation, led by Frank Lorenzo. Frank
Lorenzo. In the world of airline labor unions,
that name is basically a curse word. He was a
corporate raider. He'd already bought Continental
Airlines and taken it into bankruptcy specifically
to break the union contracts and slash wages.
When Eastern employees heard Lorenzo was the
buyer, many of them literally wept. They knew
exactly what was coming. The sources talk about
asset stripping. What did Lorenzo actually do?
One of the first and most controversial things
was a system called... System 1. This was Eastern's
computer reservation system. Before the internet,
these systems were gold mines. Right. Travel
agents paid fees to use them. They were high
management software businesses buried inside
low margin airlines. Lorenzo saw that value.
He transferred ownership of System 1 from Eastern
to his holding company, Texas Air, for about
$100 million. Is that a fair price? Not even
close. Most experts valued it at 200, maybe even
400 million. So he basically took the most valuable
asset out of Eastern, moved it to his own pocket,
and then forced Eastern to pay him monthly fees
to use the system it used to own. Wow. He was
hollowing it out from the inside. He was selling
the furniture to pay the rent. He sold the shuttle
to Donald Trump. It became the Trump shuttle.
He sold the Latin American routes, which were
the only profitable part of the network. Sold
them to American Airlines. These were Eastern's
crown jewels. And the employees, they weren't
going to just take it. The relationship with
the unions, especially the machinists, was just
toxic. Totally toxic. Lorenzo demanded massive
pay cuts. The machinists, the IAM, they said
no. And that leads to the strike of 1989. March
4th, 1989. Lorenzo locks out the mechanics. He
expected to break them. He thought the pilots
would cross the picket line. But... Something
unprecedented happened. The hatred for Lorenzo
was so strong, it unified everyone. The pilots
union and the flight attendants union joined
the strike in sympathy. They refused to cross
the picket line. And that just grounded the airline
overnight. 90 % of flights canceled. It was a
war of attrition. The unions wanted to force
Lorenzo out, even if it meant killing the airline.
And Lorenzo wanted to break the unions, even
if it meant killing the airline. Mutually assured
destruction. Precisely. The airline filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy just five days later. They
tried to keep flying with replacement workers,
but the damage was done. And eventually the court
had to step in. Yes. In 1990, the bankruptcy
judge actually removed Lorenzo from control,
which is extremely rare. They brought in a trustee,
Martin Shugrue, to try and save it. And Shugrue
tried. They won her day's campaign. It was a
total Hail Mary. Shugru himself appeared in TV
ads. He admitted the airline had problems, but
he promised that Eastern would get a little bit
better every day. Did it work at all? Shockingly,
yes, for a bit. Bookings went up. The public
loves an underdog story. But the financial hole
was just too deep. And then history intervened
one last time. The first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein
invaded Kuwait. Oil prices spiked again. A recession
hit. People stopped flying because they were
afraid of terrorism. Eastern had absolutely no
cash cushion left. And that was it. January 1991.
It was sudden. Midnight on a Saturday, January
19th. Management realized they couldn't make
payroll. They couldn't even pay for fuel for
the next day's flights. And the decision was
made to shut it all down. And the most tragic
detail is that the reservation agents were still
taking bookings that night. They had no idea.
They were selling tickets for flights the next
week, completely unaware that the airline would
cease to exist in a few hours. So employees just
showed up for work on Sunday morning. and found
chains on the doors at Miami, at LaGuardia, security
guards turning them away. 18 ,000 people were
out of a job instantly. Gone. The Great Silver
Fleet was grounded for good. Yeah. The planes
were flown to the desert. Delta bought the L
-1011s. U .S. Air bought the 757s. The carcass
was just picked clean. It's just staggering to
think an organization that large, that was such
a part of the country's infrastructure, could
just dissolve. It really shows you the fragility
of legacy. Eastern had everything, the routes,
the planes, the brand. But a combination of bad
strategic bets, toxic labor relations, and just
an inability to adapt to the new world destroyed
it. But the name didn't fully die, did it? It's
kind of a zombie brand. It is. Airline names
have value. In 2015, a new group launched an
Eastern Airlines as a charter service. They even
painted the planes with the old hockey stick
livery. It must have been pretty nostalgic to
see that at an airport. It was, but that venture
folded. Then in 2020, another Eastern Airlines
launched. It's not the giant that Rickenbacker
built. It's just the name. So as we wrap this
up, what's the big takeaway? Why does the story
of Eastern still matter today? I think it's a
warning about complacency. Eastern assumed its
position was secure because it was one of the
big four. They bet wrong on jets. They bet wrong
on oil. And they treated their employees as the
enemy. It really does prove that no company is
too big to fail. Exactly. We look at the big
airlines today and think they're permanent. But
Pan Am is gone. TWA is gone. Eastern is gone.
The industry is just incredibly volatile. So
here's a provocative question for you to think
about as we finish. In our era of... Constant
airline mergers and consolidations. Could we
see another one of these giants disappear overnight?
Could we wake up one Saturday and find that a
major carrier has just stopped flying? It's not
impossible. High debt, external shocks like pandemics
or wars. It's always a possibility. A sobering
thought. But let's end on a lighter note. If
you have a minute today, go online and just look
up a picture of the Lockheed L -1011 Whisper
Liner in that polished silver hockey stick livery.
It really was a beautiful piece of machinery.
It really was. The chrome of the skies. That's
it for this deep dive. Thanks for listening,
and we'll catch you on the next one. Safe travels.