aa73

OK I'm gonna shut up now since they all changed their requirements!

III Corps

PI did their homework and found that a car in the top 10 had more time on TV and more buying power than ads on television. The car spent a lot of time on camera and combined with ads with McLean Stevenson, the PR program went fairly well.

The Ed came into town. Ed told the press in RDU (one of the old strongholds in the South) that 'cool northern efficiency would replace warm southern hospitality'. Score a big one for Ed on the Idiot Scale. Then Ed had his 'marketing guru' Randy Malin dismantle PSA and the Florida Shuttle, the former doing well in its market and the latter doing great in the Florida market. Malin then decided the 767 out of CLT to Bermuda was too big.. never mind that the cargo paid for the flight.. Randy put a 727 on it and the load factor was close to 100%. Never mind that it could not carry the cargo.

And of course, the race car was redneck so it had to go. Never mind that it was a marketing success, got incredible bang for the buck and the viewing audience second only to the NFL.

And while all this was going on, AA decided to go into RDU. The airport authority agreed they needed a new runway BUT they didn't want to spend all that money on buying land so they located the new runway a bit too close to the old one for parallel approaches. I would have LOVED to have been a fly on the wall when Crandall found out about that one. I believe this was the first airport with the PRM ILS approaches with reduced spacing. AND the airport planners decided that high speed taxiways were NOT needed. (who are these guys??) And the state politicians wanted international flights out of the capitol. Alas, it all folded in on itself much like BNA and AA retreated back to its strongholds.

Finally, Ed was known for two other quotes. 1) No one's career will be adversely effected by this merger (I think he meant in management) and 2) We know how to run an airline."Ed reportedly said that originally he wanted to be a concert violinist and more than a few airline pilots wish he had gotten his desire.