Heyas,

While a fearsome negotiating opponent, Crandal was a brilliant manager and thinker. Three colossal innovations that are directly attributable to him are computer reservations systems, frequent flyer programs and yield management.

With a few ISOLATED exceptions, he had, and still has no peer in the business. He forsaw the trainwreck of de-regulation, and tried to warn everyone of its consequences.

De-regulation was started by a kid in the CAB almost as a joke, and mistakenly taken up by Kennedy as "quick hit" to show that all democrats weren't for Big Government.

You simply cannot have low margin, high captial expenditure businesses completely de-regulated. They self-destruct because of loose money and destructive competition by entities with no responsibilty to serve "the public good". All one needs to see are the attempts to de-regulate other utilities like power (the CA power fiasco of a few years ago) and telephone (RIP ATT/MCI/Worldcom, etc, etc).

Nu