Word: braniffs
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Recession, price wars and sharply rising fuel costs have gravely wounded the airline industry during the past four years. Last week those troubles claimed their first major victim. Braniff International, the ninth largest U.S. airline, declared bankruptcy. It was the first failure of a major carrier since American aviation came flying out of the barnstorming era in the 1930s...
With a cool precision not always seen on its flights, Braniff in a matter of hours called in its 75 aircraft, canceled all flights, fired nearly 9,000 employees and threw a police guard around its lavish $70 million headquarters building at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Flight 501 was on its way toward Hawaii when it made an unscheduled stop in Santa Barbara, Calif., apparently to decide whether the plane should return to Dallas. The choice to continue was made. Captain Bob Gilchrist, the pilot of what possibly was history's final Braniff flight, 902 from Buenos Aires...
...million during the past two years. Chairman Neil Bergt has been desperately trying to reduce costs by laying off some workers and getting others to take a 10% pay cut. Says he: "We can't continue the losses we have had." Other airlines on the endangered list are Braniff, Pan American, World Airways, Republic and Continental. Braniff last month met with its 39 major creditors to propose a make-it-or-break-it refinancing plan...
...Braniff badly needed the wage deferral assistance from its employees to ease a sudden and potentially ruinous cash crunch. The trouble arose when approximately $9 million worth of Braniff tickets were unexpectedly presented for redemption by the airline industry's ticket clearing house. The clearing house operates like a kind of back-office ticket exchange, allowing reservation agents for one airline to accept tickets for fares written by another carrier...
Problems surfaced when rumors started to spread that Braniff was on the verge of bankruptcy. Thousands of passengers holding Braniff tickets panicked and traded them in at ticket offices for seats on BranifFs archrival, American Airlines. Last week allegations were made to the Civil Aeronautics Board by unspecified airline-industry insiders that American let the Braniff tickets accumulate, then abruptly dumped them into the clearinghouse hopper in a "dirty tricks" campaign designed to create a Braniff cash crunch and hasten the airline's demise. Though American Airlines dismissed the charge as "absolutely ridiculous," the CAB is looking into...