Word: pattersoned
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...soon proved himself wrong. When the operator of a fledgling airline, Pacific Air Transport, was granted a $5,000 loan, Patterson was put on the account. As most airlines were then regarded as being in the same class as fly-by-night carnivals, the bank took a somewhat dim view of the loan. Patterson brightened his employer's view by getting the loan paid off, but he soon found himself more interested in flying than in banking. Through his new concern with aviation he met the late P. G. Johnson, president of Boeing Aircraft, who was then helping William...
...trust-busting New Dealers took over the Government. They promptly canceled all airmail contracts because of "collusion" between the airline operators in setting rates, split up Bill Boeing's trust and "exiled" Johnson from the airline business for five years. In the crisis, there was no one but Patterson to take on the job of running United, and pull it out of its tailspin (United's stock fell from $35 a share just before the cancellation order to $14 when the Army took over the mail routes). Patterson won back all but one of the canceled contracts...
...turned out to be a great day for United also. The line, skillfully put together, tapped the richest, most heavily traveled U.S. routes. Now it needed the right kind of management to pay off. Pat Patterson supplied the management. He emphasized safety and regularity rather than speed. He pioneered safety gadgets, tried out new ideas to get riders on his planes. Example: for a time he carried the wives of men on business trips free, to get them over their objections to their husbands' flying...
...take the guesswork out of estimating future traffic and the number and kinds of planes needed to carry it, he set up an economics planning division. Dismayed by the wasteful and expensive competition between lines for new planes, Patterson got four other lines together, talked them into agreeing on a single new design for all of them. The result: the famed DC-4. As Patterson says: Why be first? Why not even up the gamble on a new plane? In the same way, he got together with American Airlines' C. R. Smith early in the war and got Douglas...
...Team. Despite Patterson's bounce, drive, and salary and bonuses of $50,000 a year, he does not fly United alone. Says he: "I can't build an airline myself. I surround myself with good men . . . give them every chance. This means they'll do good work and make me look good...