Word: braniff
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...Braniff's end in Dallas came, fittingly, in a driving thunderstorm that had already delayed some takeoffs. Bill Rafter, a salesman from Fort Wayne, Ind., was on the last Braniff flight from Dallas to Kansas City. Said he: "We had waited four hours because of the weather delays, and then we find out that the airline is shutting down." One Dallas couple, Pete and Mary Ann Moxon, had built up enough promotional points by flying Braniff at odd hours to earn a nearly free trip to London. Now, with baby-sitting grandparents already in town from Delaware to free...
...Braniff's employees were dismayed. Morale had been high, and many Braniff people had been led to believe that the airline just might make it with its slimmed-down route system, put into effect this past spring, and its aggressively discounted fares, offered beginning last fall. Said Steven Suhn, 30, a Braniff reservations supervisor: "We had two yards to go before the goal line." There were worries, too, among older Braniff employees over what would happen to their company pensions. They are protected under a 1974 law that guarantees at least part of their retirement pay if Braniff ends...
...Braniff President Howard D. Putnam, 44, had been publicly optimistic to the end. He told shareholders at the annual meeting three weeks ago that the changes he had made had turned Braniff into a "viable airline on the operating cost side...
Last week, though, events moved quickly. The company's last desperate effort to win passengers by slashing prices was not working well enough. Braniff flights had less than half of the seats filled. Early in the week, M. Philip Guthrie, the company's chief financial officer, told Putnam that Braniff did not have enough cash available to pay bills for food, jet fuel and salaries. Airline officials held last-minute talks with other carriers, reportedly including United and Northwest, exploring the possibility of mergers, and solicited new cash from investors...
...those attempts failed, and so Braniff executives put into effect a plan that called for getting the airline's planes back to a few domestic airports, including Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami, so that they could not be easily seized by the company's creditors. On Wednesday the Braniff board of directors took the final decision to file for bankruptcy. At 5 p.m. employees were told unofficially to clean out their desks and not to come to work the next day, which was payday...