Word: convairs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...nation's biggest defense contractor, General Dynamics Corp., last week found a man to succeed Frank Pace Jr., 49, as chairman and chief executive. Burdened by a record $425 million development loss from the commercial Convair 880 and 990 jets (TIME, Jan. 5), the company's powerful executive committee some weeks ago launched a search to put "new blood into top management." Last week Pace resigned. Tapped to replace him as chief executive at a salary of $125,000 was Roger Lewis. 50, now a $71,600-a-year executive vice president of Pan American World Airways...
...Matter of Tailoring. Economically, the 880 was an ill-starred plane. Convinced that it would be first on the market with a medium-range jet, General Dynamics' Convair Division tailored the plane to the specifications of its first customer, unpredictable Industrialist Howard Hughes, who ordered 30 of the 880s for TWA. But when the planes were ready, it took Hughes a year to raise the money to pay for them. In the meantime, Convair lost an order for eleven more 880s from United Air Lines, which switched to a plane that Boeing had hastily tailored to United...
...Convair backed out of the commercial jet business with the 880 fiasco, it might have held its losses to perhaps $100 million. Instead, in an attempt to recoup its 880 losses, Convair decided to build a long-range jet, the 990, which, by using the then new fanjet engine, would fly faster (635 m.p.h.) than any comparable commercial jet. To save lead time, Convair skipped making a prototype, with the result that when the first 990s came off the production line, they could not fly at the guaranteed speed-and General Dynamics was forced to cut the sale price...
...Staff Man. It was this series of disasters, all of which sent General Dynamics' jet development costs soaring hundreds of millions of dollars above Convair's original estimates, that landed G.D. in its present trouble. Pace insists that there were no obviously wrong decisions involved-just a run of incredibly bad luck...
...Pace's critics charge him with failing to exercise effective control over Convair, which, as the company's largest and most profitable division, he allowed to operate almost as an independent corporation, until he finally broke it up into four separate divisions last May. By failing to take hold of Convair earlier and to familiarize himself with its operations, argue these critics, Pace deprived himself of the opportunity to spot the danger signals that heralded coming crises. Pace concedes that "from the start, Convair resisted supervision." But, says he, "The people making decisions there had been doing...