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On January 27, 2010, Herb Kelleher Center Entrepreneur-in-Residence and business history enthusiast Gary Hoover presented the second in his series of four talks on business history. His history of the airline industry entitled Flying High was delivered to a nearly full house at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.
Using over 300 color images from airline history, Hoover began with the rise of the early industry, consisting of many small airlines. When Charles Lindbergh made the first successful transatlantic flight in 1927, the possibilities of air travel became apparent to both travelers and investors.
By the early 1930s, President Herbert Hoover’s Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown personally shaped the industry into the “Big Four” domestic carriers – American, United, Transcontinental & Western Air (TWA), and Eastern. In addition, Juan Trippe’s Pan American Airways was selected to be the “chosen instrument” of the US government to compete with the often-older, state-supported airlines of Europe. Further steps during the FDR administration solidified the strength of these five carriers while at the same time allowing a handful of smaller “trunk” airlines to grow.
Hoover focused on the history and evolution of the five giants as well as some of the Texas-based carriers, such as Braniff, Continental, and the highly successful late-comer, Southwest. American Airlines was led for many years by former UT accounting student CR Smith, one of the great industry pioneers. Braniff was expanded so fast it burst by another former UT student, Harding Lawrence.
The story of the airlines is the story of maps and geography, technology from Ford Tri-Motors to Boeing jets, flight attendants and their uniforms, and globalization, all of which Hoover showed with vivid imagery.
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[...] one of his lifetime passions (as you can see for yourself in his History of the Airline industry presentation). Gary went on to add that that everything goes in cycles and through study of the past, along [...]