Trans World Airlines
Trans World Airlines , commonly known as
TWA, was an
American airline that was acquired by
American Airlines in April
2001. For many years it was headquartered at the
Kansas City Downtown Airport, as well as
midtown Manhattan in
New York City. At the time of the buyout, it was headquartered in
St. Louis,
Missouri, and used the airport nearby,
Lambert-Saint Louis International Airport, as its major hub.
TWA once shared the U.S. international air market with fellow pioneer
Pan American World Airways.
Trans World Airlines can trace its origins to 1930, when
Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown, under President
Herbert Hoover, encouraged
Transcontinental Air Transport (T-A-T) and
Western Air Express to merge in order to get an air mail contract. This became known as the
Air Mail Scandal.
Transcontinental was the bigger of the two airlines and had the marquis expertise of
Charles Lindbergh and economic power of founder
Clement Melville Keys (chairman of airplane manufacturer
Curtiss-Wright), while Western Air was the slightly older line (founded in July 13, 1925). The new airline was called
Transcontinental and Western Air (T&WA).The newly merged company's headquarters was in Kansas City, Missouri [
1]. Transcontinental in 1929 had initiated a 48-hour cross country train and plane route with a stopover in Kansas City. The merged airline soon offered a plane-only cross country trip called the
Lindbergh Route, which initially also called for overnights in Kansas City.
The airline nearly went out of business in the wake of the 1931 crash of T&WA Flight 599 from Kansas City to Los Angeles that killed
Notre Dame coach
Knute Rockne.
Keys left the aviation business in 1932 when government regulation forced aircraft builders to divest themselves of airline subsidiaries. The
Air Mail Act of 1934, passed under President
Franklin Roosevelt, dissolved the forced Transcontinental and Western merger, although the T&WA name stuck.
Jack Frye, who had been chairman of Western, stayed with T&WA as president and vowed to replace the company's aging fleet of
Fokker Trimotors, the type that was involved in the Rockne crash. Frye was to usher in a golden age for the airline in which it became known as the "pilot's airline" in which its fleet was always cutting edge.
Frye's plea for new aircraft was ultimately to result in the construction of the
DC-3. On February 18, 1934, Frye and
Eddie Rickenbacker flew a prototype of the plane, the
DC-1, from
Burbank, California, to
Newark, New Jersey, in a record-breaking 13 hours and 4 minutes.
Frye was to feud with the board over the acquisition of new aircraft, particularly the
Boeing 307, which was the first commercial plane with a pressurized cabin. He got Howard Hughes to finance it, and Hughes soon became majority owner of the airline.
Howard Hughes
|
A T&WA Douglas DC-3 is prepared for takeoff from Columbus, Ohio in 1940. |
Howard Hughes purchased
T&WA in
1939, and the airline expanded dramatically under the leadership of Hughes and CEO
Jack Frye. After breaking
Pan American World Airways' legal designation as the United States' sole international carrier,
T&WA began trans-Atlantic service in
1946 using new elegant
Lockheed Constellation (the "Connies") aircraft, changing its name to
The Trans World Airline. Hughes and Frye were to fly a Constellation across the country on April 17, 1944, in a record 7 hours.
The airline's legal maneuvering also eliminated a possible competitive threat from
American Overseas Airlines, affiliated with American Airlines, relegating them to non-scheduled charter service only and eventually forcing them out of all European-U.S. service by
1950. As a result, TWA and Pan Am were the only U.S. airlines that served Europe until the 1970s.
TWA was also a major force in the founding of
Saudi Arabian Airlines,
Ethiopian Airlines, and a newly revived
Lufthansa after World War II. Airlines from around the world sent their pilots to TWA for training.
In 1950, the airline again changed its name, this time to
Trans World Airlines. Between 1954 and 1958 it moved its executive offices from its
landmark downtown Kansas City tower to New York. However the servicing of the fleet continued to be handled in Kansas City. Initially servicing was at a former
B-25 Mitchell bomber factory at
Fairfax Airport in
Kansas City, Kansas. When the
Great Flood of 1951 destroyed the facility, the city of Kansas City built TWA a 5,000-acre airport on farmland 15 miles north of downtown at what was to become
Kansas City International Airport. At its peak, the airline was one of Kansas City's biggest employers with more than 20,000 employees.
It established routes from Europe to
Asia during the 1950s and 1960s, flying its aircraft as far east as
Hong Kong.
In the 1950s the
TWA Moonliner was the tallest structure at
Disneyland and depicted atomic-powered travel to come in 1986.
In 1956, TWA entered the jet age when Hughes placed an order for 63
Convair 880s at a cost of $400 million. The transaction was to ultimately result in Hughes losing control of the airline because outside creditors financing the deal did not want Hughes controlling development and operation of aircraft.
Charles C. Tillinghast Jr.
In
1961, TWA became the first international all-jet airline, with their last piston-powered flight in the Lockheed 1649 Starliner from Rome to New York. That same year, TWA began showing the first inflight movies.
Hughes formally relinquished power in 1961 in the battle of the purchase of the Convairs. In the deal,
Charles C. Tillinghast Jr. became chairman and was to oversee the airline until 1976. The battle over Hughes' control was to continue until a court order in 1966 forced him to sell his stock at a profit of $546 million (which he used to create new airline
Hughes Airwest).
Under new corporate management, the
Trans World Corporation (TWA's holding company) expanded to purchase the overseas operations of
Hilton Hotels.
Revolutionary airport design
TWA was one of the first airlines in the world to embrace the
spoke-hub distribution paradigm. TWA was one of the first airlines to use the
Boeing 747 and it planned to use the 747 along with the anticipated
supersonic transport to whisk people between the West/Midwest (via Kansas City) and New York City (via
John F. Kennedy International Airport) to European and other world destinations. As part of this strategy, TWA's hub airports were to be designed so that gates would be close to the street. However the TWA-style airport design was to prove impractical and costly when
Cuban hijackings in the late 1960s, followed by more sinister and deadly Mideast hijackings, required central security checkpoints.
=John F. Kennedy International Airport
=
In
1962 TWA opened
Terminal 5 at New York City's
JFK Airport. The TWA Flight Center, as it was originally known, was designed by
Eero Saarinen. The terminal was described as a "lyrical expression of the unified sculptural forms that could be created in reinforced concrete before the age of
computer-aided design." But it proved to be a costly security nightmare. With the demise of TWA, it is now being partially torn down and converted to a conventional hub-and-spoke design.
=Kansas City International Airport
=Kansas City approved a $150 million bond issue for the TWA hub there. TWA vetoed plans for a
Dulles International Airport-style hub-and-spoke gate structure. Following union strife, the airport ultimately cost $250 million when it opened in 1972, with
Spiro Agnew officiating. TWA's gates, which were conceived of being within 100 feet of the street, were likewise to become obsolete because of security. When Kansas City refused to rebuild its terminals (even as
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport rebuilt its similarly designed terminals), TWA began looking elsewhere. Missouri politicians moved to keep it in the state. In 1982 TWA began a decade long move to
Lambert International Airport in
St. Louis, Missouri.
World's first all jet fleet
On April 7,
1967, TWA became the world's first all-jet airline with the retirement of their last Lockheed 749 Constellation aircraft. That morning throughout the TWA system, aircraft ground service personnel placed a booklet on every passenger seat titled "Props Are For Boats."
|
The recognizable TWA logotype |
By
1969, TWA had eclipsed Pan American World Airways' one-time Atlantic dominance. And in the
Transpacific Route Case of 1969, TWA was given authority to extend its route network across the
Pacific Ocean to Hawaii, Japan, and Taiwan.
In 1969 TWA opened the
Breech Academy on a 25-acre campus in the Kansas City suburb of
Overland Park, Kansas, to train its flight attendants, ticket and travel agents, as well as providing flight simulators for its pilots. It became the definitive training facility and other airlines sent their staff to it.
The airline continued to aggressively expand European operations throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In
1987, TWA could boast of a trans-Atlantic system that stretched from Los Angeles to Bombay, including virtually every major European population center, with gateways from the United States in 10 major cities.
Dominance of the trans-Atlantic market
TWA's zenith would occur in the summer of
1988, when, for the first and only time, the airline would carry more than 50 percent of all the trans-Atlantic passengers to fly across the ocean. Every day,
Boeing 747,
Lockheed L-1011, and
Boeing 767 aircraft would depart to more than 30 cities in Europe, fed by a small but effective domestic operation focused on moving U.S. passengers to New York or other gateway cities for widebody service across the Atlantic, while a similar inter-European operation would shuttle non-U.S. passengers to TWA's European gateways for travel to the U.S. This glory would be short lived with entry into the trans-Atlantic market by additional U.S. carriers such as American Airlines,
Delta Air Lines, and
United Airlines, all hungry to expand and with the financing to back aggressive European expansion plans.
From 1969 to 1986 four TWA airliners were terrorist targets.
* In 1969
TWA Flight 840 from Rome to Athens was hijacked to Damascus. Nobody was injured and its nose was blown up (although replaced and the plane returned to service).
* In 1974
TWA Flight 841 from Tel Aviv to New York crashed shortly after takeoff from Athens after a bomb believed to have been in the cargo hold exploded, killing all 88 onboard.
* In 1985
TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome was hijacked first to Beirut, then to Algiers, back to Beirut, back to Algiers, and finally back to Beirutâ€"with some of its fuel being paid for by the
Shell credit card of flight attendant
Uli Derickson.
* In 1986
TWA Flight 840 was again attacked with an onboard bomb, sucking four Americans to their deaths.
Bankruptcy #1
Although Tillinghast continued a golden era for TWA, he ignored the trans-Pacific market and the dedicated
air cargo market. He was accused of saying, "There's no money in the Pacific and there's no money in cargo. We're gonna' shrink this airline 'til it's profitable." These two oversights are said to be the undoing of TWA.
Airline deregulation hit TWA hard in the 1980s. TWA had badly neglected domestic U.S. expansion at a time when the newly deregulated domestic market was growing at an exponential rate. TWA's holding company, Trans World Corporation, spun off the airline. But the airline became starved for capital after having been spun off. The airline briefly considered selling itself to corporate raider
Frank Lorenzo in the 1980s, but ended up selling to corporate raider
Carl Icahn in
1985. Under Icahn's direction, many of its most profitable assets were sold to competitors, much to the detriment of TWA. Icahn also moved the company's headquarters from New York City to his hometown
Mt. Kisco, New York. Icahn was eventually ousted in
1993, though not before the airline was forced to file for bankruptcy in
1992. Icahn emerged unscathed. TWA moved its headquarters from Mt. Kisco to the former headquarters building of
McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis soon after Icahn left.
Bankruptcy #2
When Carl Ichan left in 1993, he arranged to have TWA give Karabu Corp., an entity he controlled, the rights to buy TWA tickets at 45 percent off published fares through September 2003. This was named "The Karabu deal" [
2]. The ticket program agreement, which began on June 14, 1995, excluded tickets for travel which originated or terminated in
St. Louis,
Missouri. Tickets were subject to TWA's normal seat assignment and boarding pass rules and regulations, were non-assignable to any other carrier and were non-endorsable. No commissions were paid to Karabu by TWA for tickets sold under the ticket program agreement.
By agreement dated August 14, 1995, Lowestfare.com LLC, a Karabu wholly owned operating subsidiary, was joined as a party to the ticket program agreement. Pursuant to the ticket program agreement, Lowestfare.com LLC could purchase an unlimited number of system tickets. System tickets are tickets for all applicable classes of service which were purchased by Karabu from TWA at a 45 percent discount from TWA's published fare. In addition to system tickets, Lowestfare.com LLC could also purchase domestic consolidator tickets, which are tickets issued at bulk fare rates and were limited to specified origin/destination city markets and did not permit the holder to modify or refund a purchased ticket. Karabu's purchase of domestic consolidator tickets was subject to a cap of $70 million per year based on the full retail price of the tickets.
Hence, on most TWA flights, Karabu could buy and then sell a sizable portion of the available seats, leaving TWA to pay for its operating cost with the revenue accrued through the sale of any remaining ticket sales. In other words, TWA was flying passengers who were not paying them, but someone else. This deal left the company powerless. If TWA wanted to increase revenue on busy routes by putting a large plane into service, Karabu could only claim more seats. It is estimated TWA was losing around $150 million a year in revenue with this deal.
In trying to deal with the Karabu deal, TWA went in and out of bankruptcy in 1995.
Bankruptcy #3
TWA Flight 800
On
July 17,
1996,
TWA Flight 800 exploded over the
Atlantic near
Long Island, killing all aboard. The
National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the most likely cause of the disaster was a center fuel tank explosion sparked by exposed wiring. The cause is debated, but the media focused heavily on the fact that TWA's airline fleet was among the oldest in service.
Short turn around
By
1998, TWA reorganized as a primarily domestic carrier, with routes centered around hubs at St. Louis and New York. Partly in response to
TWA Flight 800 and the age of its fleet, TWA announced a major fleet renewal, ordering 125 new aircraft. TWA paid for naming rights for the new
Trans World Dome, home of the
St. Louis Rams in its corporate hometown.
Acquisition by American Airlines
Financial problems began to resurface shortly afterward, and TWA's airline assets were acquired by American Airlines in April of
2001. As part of the deal, TWA declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy (for the third time) the day after it agreed to the purchase. The terms of the deal was a $500 million payment however since American assumed TWA's liabilities the deal was estimated to have cost American $2 billion.[
3] American did not claim the naming rights for the Rams home, which eventually became the
Edward Jones Dome, named after the financial services company with the same name.
Trans World Airlines flew its last flight on
December 1, 2001. The ceremonial last flight was Flight 220 from
Kansas City, Missouri, to St. Louis, with CEO Captain William Compton at the controls. However, the final flight before TWA
officially became part of American Airlines was completed between St. Louis and
Las Vegas,
Nevada, also on December 1, 2001. At 10:00 p.m. CST on that date, employees began removing all TWA signs and placards from airports around the country, replacing them with American Airlines signs. At midnight, all TWA flights officially became listed as American Airlines flights. Some aircraft carried hybrid American/TWA livery during the transition, with American's tricolor stripe on the fuselage and TWA's name on the tail. One lighted TWA sign still exists (
as of 2006) on the runway side of Saarinen's New York JFK terminal.
TWA's St. Louis hub suffered after the merger due to its proximity to American's much larger hub at
Chicago's
O'Hare International Airport. As a result, American replaced TWA's St. Louis mainline hub with
regional jet service (going from over 800 operations a day to fewer than 300) and downsized TWA's maintenance base in Kansas City. Furloughs and layoffs have left less than 1,500 of 24,000 TWA employees with American Airlines jobs. Although American Airlines acquired over 200 aircraft from TWA (MD80s, 717s, 757s, and 767s), many analysts believe the TWA assets were not worth the additional debt inherited from TWA â€" however American did eliminate one of its prime competitors. .
*
Internet Archive of Trans World Airlines' website*
TWAlive*
Fly TWA Historical Site*
Terminal 5 TWA's Terminal 5 at New York's Kennedy International Airport
*
TWACrew.com*
Trans World Israel 1946-2001*
TWA Roissy Charles de Gaulle website*
TWA Directors of Customer Services website*
TWAPilot.com*
TWA Video at Google Video*
TWA plane with AA stripes
