Originally Posted by deltabound

Beat me to it!

Excellent book. Most pilots simply have no contextual, broad-based overview of the airline business of the past 70 years. Our views tend to be extremely myopic and focused on our tiny piece of the pie. Buzzwords like "Lorezno", "B-scale", "deregulation", "featherbedding", "alter-ego carrier" and so forth generate a lot of emotion, but for the most part, there isn't any understanding of what they really mean, or where they came from.

• How did Pan Am's acquisition of National doom it to oblivion?
• Why were pilots ready, even eager, to cross a potential Eastern airlines mechanics picket line?
• Which unionized pilot group first agreed to the "B-scale" first, and more importantly, why?
• Why was deregulation of some form utterly unstoppable and inevitable?
• How did "Sabre" and "Apollo" give certain airlines a HUGE advantage, both pre and post deregulation?
• How did the Continental pilots try their hardest to stave off a takeover bid by Lorenzo, and how did the political system fail them?

It's a very entertaining, very educational read. I wish the author would do an update (published around 1995); there's certainly been plenty of change over the past 14 years to warrant an update.