Jetrader - March/April 2013 - 12

JT: What improvements do you think are
needed to ensure the proﬁtability and
success of airlines today?
GB: First of all, you’ve got to have
people who are happy to come to work.
When I was an airplane mechanic, do you
know how much faster I could ﬁx an airplane when I wanted to ﬁx it than when
I didn’t want to ﬁx it? A workforce that
wants to get the job done is essential in
a competitive environment like the airline
business. It makes all the difference in the
world. Your margins are so small and the
competitive edge is only in that product
delivery. You have to pick your markets
wisely and you have to price wisely, but
you’ve got to have a really dependable,
consistent product and that can only be
done with people who want to do it. Having
a workforce that enjoys coming to work is
essential to success.

“Commercial
aviation is
the biggest
team sport
in the airline
business.”

ISTAT Award winner
Gordon Bethune is widely
known for his incredible
turnaround of Continental
Airlines in the mid-1990s.

I asked the board, “Have you ever tried
running a good airline?” I wanted to see
if that worked; it did and it does.
JT: Can you explain a few keys to your
management style that led to your successful years in the industry?
GB: Get a team together. You can’t do it
on your own. You need really smart people.
I hired people like Larry Kellner (my successor) and Jeff Smisek (who today runs
United). I hired the smartest people in the
business. Absolutely. Whether it was in HR
or ﬁnance. We only hired team players—no
prima donnas. I set up a compensation
system with the board of directors that if
I got paid, they got paid, and if I didn’t
get paid, they didn’t get paid. So we were
all going to get paid or nobody was going
to get paid. We had a similar system with
on-time for the employees. If we beat the
competition, then we got extra money
that month, and if we didn’t, then nobody
got any money. So it didn’t matter if you
worked in reservations, accounting or as
a pilot, you were on the winning team

or the losing team and you got paid and
recognized for your contribution.
I was once challenged about that by
a pilot in an employee meeting early on.
He wanted to know why we would pay
a reservation agent an on-time bonus. I
remember holding up my wrist and pointing at my watch and saying, “What part
of this watch don’t you think we need?”
If there’s no one on the plane because
reservations didn’t sell the ticket, why
do we want to have the ﬂight? We need
everybody or there’s no reason to be here.
So everybody got paid or nobody got paid.
It was a teamwork approach to work.
If you watch a football game, there is a
huddle before the play. Who’s in the huddle?
Everyone who is on the team—not just
the elite guys in the backﬁeld. Everybody
has to know what the play is, buy into it
and execute it together. And when they
win, they all win. When they lose, they all
lose. Those are fundamentals. Commercial
aviation is the biggest team sport in the
airline business.

12 The ofﬁcial publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading

JT: What major changes to the industry
have you seen along the way?
GB: Consolidation, which is vital to
the success of the airlines. No one needs
20 airlines. France only has one. England
only has one or two. What do we need
20 for? I think that gives not breadth
and depth to the product, but it gives
some consistency and predictably. People
who sell you products will get paid. They
won’t be stuck in bankruptcy. Employees
will have a pension when they retire and
a stable place to work. There’s plenty of
competition. P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a
sucker born every minute,” and they usually invest in the airline business. They
start up new airlines and go bankrupt but
on their way to bankruptcy, they do all
kinds of foolish things in the market that
destroys proﬁtability for all of us. Getting
rid of the crazy guys and having some
stability is good for the economy and is
good for the employees. It is also good
for the customers.
JT: How can airlines stand out among the
competition?
GB: I believe that consistency is the
differentiator. That’s what made Continental
stand out. We were the most on-time airline
in America for years. People value that and
we attracted a disproportionate share of
revenue because of that. Companies that
fail to do that will suffer. You’re not going
to be able to gain a permanent edge in the
continued on page 14
http://naylornetwork.com/ist-nxt/
Jetrader - March/April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Jetrader - March/April 2013
