Word: pattersons
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...followed. They will not be able to use it for months, till I.L.S. ground equipment is installed in enough airports. But when it is, the lines will be ready to use it. If everyone sweats enough, and the new planes and safety devices work as well as expected, Pat Patterson expects that air travel will be as regular and safe as train travel in about three years. Then the air age will have arrived...
...Blow Hard. As a prophet, Patterson has acquired much honor, but he has not become cocky. Once, a little over a year ago, he nearly did. He was talking about United's safety record (no fatalities in over 3½ years). "Why," he boasted in a speech, "even if we had an accident tonight, I would still believe that it is a good record." That night United did have a crash on Elk Mountain, Wyoming (21 killed), the worst in United's history. Pat has never forgotten that lesson. Despite his habit of being right, he gets...
Once, at an Air Transport Association meeting, Eastern Air Lines President Eddie Rickenbacker complained that he hadn't been informed of certain matters. Patterson snapped: "If you'd quit sitting on a life raft in the Pacific all your life you'd understand these things. We discussed them at our last meeting." Rickenbacker whipped back: "Yes, and it's little sonovabitches like you that make me wish I was back there...
Grounded. Patterson's machinelike way of operating enables him to get through an enormous amount of work in jigtime. In addition to bossing United, he is a director in three non-aviation companies. Yet his desk in his blue-green, semi-paneled office, across from Chicago's Municipal Airport, is usually clean of work. Sometimes he dictates for hours. He does it methodically, seldom fumbling for a word. He used to lunch at his desk, but an attack of stomach ulcers cured him of that. (The ulcers are also cured now.) As a result, he is a careful...
...goer, he spends most of his off time there with his attractive wife, Vera, and their two redheaded children, Bill Jr., at 13 already taller than his dad, and Patricia, 18. The farm has a chicken house (85 Rhode Island reds), a three-hole golf course gone to seed (Patterson is considered by his friends one of the world's worst golfers), and a small lake stocked with bass, blue gills and crappies...