Eastern Airlines history

The company, originally Pitcairn Aviation, began in the early 1920s when civil aviation consisted mainly of barnstorming and stunt flying. Founded by Harold Pitcairn, who shocked his wealthy family by announcing his intention of making a business out of airplanes, the young company entered the marketplace as a contract mail carrier.

In a surprise move, Pitcairn sold the airline in 1930 to Clement Keys, who moved the airline’s headquarters to Brooklyn, New York, and changed its name to Eastern Air Transport. As a promotional gimmick, 22 women were selected as cabin attendants—among them Mildred Aldrin, whose nephew Buzz found fame as an astronaut.

The company remained relatively healthy throughout the depression years until Keys took an extended trip to Europe. In his absence, his business associates diverted funds into the stillplunging stock market, leaving Keys to face financial ruin. Keys saved the airline through negotiation, in exchange for his resignation. On January 1, 1935, a new general manager was named to (then called) Eastern Air Lines whose name would forever be associated with the company. His name was Edward Vernon Rickenbacker.

Rickenbacker, a World War I flying ace, ruled the company with an iron fist for a quarter of a century and left a glittering record of 26 consecutive years of profit to his successors. When Rickenbacker turned over the leadership of Eastern to Malcolm MacIntyre in 1959, the airline served 128 cities in 27 states, encompassing almost three-fourths of the American population. MacIntyre was an accomplished lawyer but had virtually no experience in the rough-and-tumble game of running a major airline. When he left office in 1963, Eastern was headed for financial oblivion. MacIntyre will be remembered for two bright spots in the company’s history—the introduction of the Boeing 727 and the development of the Shuttle.

The former became a workhorse of the industry, and the latter involved a brilliant customer relations strategy. Shuttle flights between New York, Washington, and Boston required no reservations and guaranteed a seat to anyone who showed up. The Shuttle immediately became a way of life for people moving along the heavily traveled Washington–New York–Boston corridor.

In 1975, Eastern’s fortunes were entrusted to a man who was called the real inheritor of Captain Eddie’s leadership mantle—former astronaut Colonel Frank Borman. As president and CEO, Borman brought a familiar military ethic back to Eastern. He negotiated wage concessions from the employees in an attempt to save the company from disaster, but failed to compensate for the exorbitant cost of the new airplanes he had ordered or the costly effects of DEREGULATION. Borman and Eastern’s machinist unions clashed furiously and frequently.

Industry analysts blamed Eastern’s troubles partly on poor management and partly on the company’s uncooperative labor unions, but the root of Eastern’s troubles lay in a poor route structure and huge debt. As a result of these seemingly incurable financial distresses, Eastern succumbed to a takeover bid by Frank Lorenzo and his Texas Air empire. The conflict over Texas Air’s acquisition extended to several employee groups and proved to be the beginning of the end for Eastern.

A period of severe employee unrest followed. In March 1989, a strike against the airline was called by the machinists and supported by the flight attendants and the pilots. A week later, Eastern filed for BANKRUPTCY, and its management fought to retain control over Eastern in the face of furious resistance from labor and rapidly diminishing confidence among its investors. In April 1990, bankruptcy court judge Burton Lifland ruled that Frank Lorenzo, the brash corporate raider who had acquired Eastern, was unfit to run the company and appointed a trustee for the airline. A lastditch effort for order failed, and on January 18, 1991, the company folded its wings for good.

See also AIRLINE INDUSTRY; PAN AMERICAN AIRWAYS.

Further reading

• Bernstein, Aaron. Grounded: Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. 
• Saunders, Martha Dunagin. Eastern’s Armageddon: Labor Conflict and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. 
• Serling, Robert J. From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines. New York: Doubleday, 1980. 

Martha Dunagin Saunders