Address:
1600 Smith Street
Houston, Texas 77002
U.S.A.
Telephone: (713) 324-5000
Toll Free: 800-525-0280
Fax: (713) 324-2637
Em7 ukulele
Public Company
Incorporated: 1934 as Varney Speed Lines
Employees: 42,900
Sales: $8.97 billion (2001)
Stock Exchanges: New York
Ticker Symbol: CAL
NAIC: 481111 Scheduled Passenger Air Transportation; 481112
Scheduled Freight Air Transportation
Company Perspectives:
Our goals are simple--they are our customers' goals. We continue to
deliver a high-quality product each and every day, getting our
customers where they want to go, on-time and with their bags, while
providing pre-flight and inflight service that is globally
recognized for consistency and excellence.
Key Dates:
1934: Varney Speed Lines is founded.
1937: Robert Foreman Six buys a 40 percent interest in
Varney.
1955: Three new cross-country routes are added in an
expansion drive.
1967: Continental is first awarded Micronesian routes.
1982: Texas Air Corporation acquires Continental.
1983: Continental files bankruptcy.
1986: Continental emerges from bankruptcy; Continental
absorbs other airlines facing bankruptcy, including Eastern, People
Express, and Frontier.
1990: Continental declares bankruptcy again.
1993: Continental regains solvency, restructures.
1994: Continental ranks last among majors for on-time
performance.
1995: Incentive-led Continental ranks first among majors for
on-time performance and earns its first profit in ten years.
1998: Northwest Airlines acquires a majority of voting
shares.
2000: Continental buys out Northwest's holding.
Company History:
Continental Airlines, Inc. is the fifth largest U.S. airline,
based on 2001 revenue passenger miles (RPMs). The company carries
passengers, cargo, and mail throughout the world. The company
serves more than 200 airports worldwide, with the majority of them
located in the United States, and has extensive service to Latin
America. Domestic flight services are operated mainly through its
business hubs in Cleveland, Houston, and Newark, from which the
carrier has attained a market leading position in the New York
area's transatlantic traffic.
Demoralized by bitter labor relations and a takeover by
corporate raider Frank Lorenzo in the 1980s, Continental became a
poster child for turnaround management in the 1990s. After almost a
decade of financial losses and declining sales, Continental finally
turned a profit in 1995. Regional unit Continental Express was spun
off in a 2002 initial public offering (IPO) as ExpressJet Airlines,
Inc.
The Early Years
The beginnings of Continental Airlines, Inc. can be traced back
to 1934, when Walter Varney founded an airline company that he
named Varney Speed Lines. Varney Speed Lines was the fourth airline
created by its founder; the first had been purchased by Boeing's
United Aircraft, and the other two had failed. Varney operated his
newest business alone until 1937, at which time a man by the name
of Robert Foreman Six used $90,000 to purchase a 40 percent
interest in the company.
Six had a background as a pilot and flight school instructor,
having dropped out of high school to work odd jobs and take flying
lessons in the mid-1920s. In 1929, at the age of 22, Six earned his
pilot's license and was running the Valley Flying Service in
Stockton, California, which sold scenic air tours of the California
countryside to area residents and tourists. When the effects of the
Depression halted his flying service, Six worked at a Boeing Air
Transport flight school in San Francisco, training airline pilots.
He later left the United States and worked for the China National
Aviation Company in Shanghai. Upon his return to the United States
the following year, Six convinced his new father-in-law to lend him
the money that was used to acquire his interest in Varney Speed
Lines.
Six's $90,000 investment was used mainly to pay debts that
Varney had accrued during the company's first three years. After
the company's financial standing was restored, only a small portion
of money remained to purchase new or upgraded equipment. Therefore,
Six used his negotiation skills to convince the Lockheed
Corporation to sell Varney Speed Lines three L-12 planes on credit.
Soon thereafter, Six led the company in changing its name from
Varney Speed Lines to Continental Airlines, contending that the
young airline would never be successful with a name like "Varney."
Such efforts soon earned Six a position as the company's
president.
Following his appointment to the presidency of Continental
Airlines, Six led the company through a period of rapid expansion.
First on his agenda was the task of enlarging the airline's fleet
of planes. At that time, the DC-3 was the most popular, practical,
and durable plane on the market; unfortunately, it was also the
most expensive, and Continental could not afford it. Instead, Six
decided to purchase a number of L-14 Lodestars from Lockheed, and
then hired 12 of the company's first stewardesses to staff the new
planes. Meanwhile, the company also was working to expand its
flight route network, which had previously consisted of a circuit
that ran between Denver, Colorado, and El Paso, Texas. First to be
added were services to Wichita, Kansas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
In the midst of his expansion efforts, Six left the company in
August 1942 to enlist in the U.S. Army, leaving Continental in the
hands of a lawyer named Terrell Drinkwater. The Japanese had
attacked Pearl Harbor, and the country was mobilizing for World War
II. Six was sworn in as a captain and stationed in New Caledonia.
He was later transferred to the Caribbean, where he was able to use
his flight knowledge to aid in maintaining a military air conduit
between the United States and Brazil. Meanwhile, Continental had
earned several government contracts during wartime and was left
with $900,000 in cash and a tiny debt of only $60,000.
Postwar Expansion Efforts
Following the war, Six returned to Continental and immediately
helped the company acquire a number of DC-3s from military surplus.
Although the planes represented an upgrade of the airline company's
fleet, DC-3s were no longer the top-of-the-line aircraft that they
had been in the 1940s. During the war years, new planes had been
developed that were more efficient, many of which had four engines
instead of two. These newer planes were designed to carry more
passengers greater distances, but were too large for Continental's
purposes. Continental was still a small airline when compared with
the country's other major airlines, even though its route network
had been expanded greatly by the addition of Kansas City and San
Antonio, Texas, as flight destinations. But regardless of the
company's flight expansion, Continental decided to purchase seven
two-engine Convair 340s from Douglas and only two four-engine
DC-6Bs, at a total price of $7.6 million. The expenditure
represented Continental's gross income for the entire year of 1951,
but also made clear Six's commitment to investing in the company's
future.
Two years later, as the company continued its push to increase
its route network and its flight capacity, Six also engineered the
company's first major acquisition. Continental purchased Pioneer
Airlines, including its rights to fly into Dallas/Ft. Worth and
Austin, Texas. With the purchase came a Pioneer manager by the name
of Harding Lawrence, whom Six soon placed in charge of
Continental's finances.
Lawrence was an instrumental factor in the success of
Continental's next expansion effort, which was the biggest and most
ambitious in the company's history to that point in time. In 1955,
the Civil Aeronautics Board granted Continental service rights
between Denver and Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago, and Chicago and
Los Angeles. Operation of the three new cross-country routes put
Continental in direct competition with the other major airlines,
such as American, United, and TWA--each of which possessed the
financial resources to put Continental out of business in a price
war.
Continental knew that it would have to purchase several new
airplanes once again, including a fleet of the latest jetliners.
Therefore, the company invested $60 million in new aircraft: DC-7s,
Viscount 810s, and Boeing 707s. The challenge to Continental was
then to use its limited jet fleet to cover all of its capacity
needs. The problem spurred the creation of Lawrence's "progressive
maintenance" program, which routinely called one of the five 707s
out of service on a rotational basis. This plan reduced the actual
maintenance time spent on the airplanes and allowed the company to
identify and correct any problems before they became serious.
Thanks to Lawrence's idea, the company was able to use its five
707s for an average of 15 hours a day, which was the longest period
of use in the industry at that time. His plan was crucial to
Continental's early survival of its entrance into the cross-country
flight market.
In 1959, another important player appeared at Continental when
Alexander Damm left his job at TWA and was brought aboard by Six.
Damm's first contribution was to end Continental's practice of
leasing items such as aircraft, trucks, and equipment from other
companies. He noted that the country's two most profitable
airlines, Delta and Northwest, each used the lowest percentage of
leased equipment. He convinced Six to cancel as many leasing
arrangements as possible and begin instead to focus the company's
resources on purchasing more equipment of its own.
The 1960s: Merger Attempts and Expanded Services
Entering the 1960s, Continental was enjoying a period of
relatively good prosperity. In early 1961, a group of bankers in
charge of the now financially troubled TWA approached Six with a
lucrative offer to become the company's president. When he turned
them down, making clear his loyalty to Continental, the group began
making offers to merge the two companies. Six still refused,
stating that a merger was not in the company's best interest at
that time. Therefore, it was somewhat of a surprise later that year
when Six and Ted Baker of National Airlines announced a merger of
their two companies. The merger, however, was quickly canceled when
Six found out that Baker also had secretly negotiated the sale of
National to Maytag's Frontier Airlines.
The following year, Continental experienced the first plane
crash in the company's 24-year history. The crash occurred on May
22, 1962, and was caused by a bomb that exploded aboard one of the
company's 707s. There were no survivors. Continental had already
planned on gradually replacing its 707 fleet with new Boeing 720s,
a shorter and faster version of the 707. After the bombing, the
company increased its original order from four new 720s to
five.
In 1963, the Civil Aeronautics Board finally released
Continental from its obligation to operate a number of unprofitable
rural air services that fed passenger traffic into larger air
terminals. Therefore, Continental was able to sell off its smaller
aircraft and reassign the pilots and flight staff to its larger and
more profitable routes. The following year, the company received a
contract from the U.S. government to carry out military
transportation services in Southeast Asia. A new subsidiary was
formed, called Continental Air Services (CAS), and operated
alongside Air America, the Central Intelligence Agency's covertly
run airline. CAS, however, did not engage in any CIA activity.
Meanwhile, TWA's chairman, Howard Hughes, had fallen out of
favor and was offering to sell his controlling interest in TWA to
Continental and make Six the newly formed company's president. But
Six knew that the deal would require the approval of TWA's new
board of directors, who were happy with the company's performance
under Charles Tillinghast at that time. Six once again declined the
merger proposition, feeling that the management at TWA did not
trust Hughes and that they would be unlikely to go along with any
of his ideas.
Later that year, Continental suffered a blow to its management
team, as Harding Lawrence left the company to accept a position as
president of Braniff Airlines. Initially, no attempt was made to
replace him. A year later, however, Six brought aboard Pierre
Salinger, the late President Kennedy's press secretary, as a member
of Continental's board of directors.
In the late 1960s, the Civil Aeronautics Board invited bids for
a commercial air service to link the United States to the
approximately 2,500 islands in the South Pacific that make up the
American Trust Territory. Continental had wanted to operate a
trans-Pacific route for years, and it saw this as the perfect
opportunity to demonstrate its ability to do so. In November 1967,
Continental was awarded routes to various islands in Micronesia and
Northern Mariana. A subsidiary called Air Micronesia was created in
partnership with Hawaii's Aloha Airlines and an investor group
called United Micronesian. A fleet of 727s was obtained, airports
along the route were modernized, and a number of hotels were
constructed for tourists.
Declining Profitability in the 1970s and 1980s
Unfortunately, Continental faced numerous obstacles as it
entered the 1970s, and its financial standing began to suffer. The
first blow came just after Richard Nixon took over the presidency
of the United States. In one of his very last acts as President,
Lyndon Johnson had awarded air traffic rights to Hawaii, Australia,
and New Zealand to Continental. To accommodate its increased
capacity demands, the company purchased a fleet of four 747s.
Barely a month later, Nixon took office and canceled Continental's
rights to the three destinations. Later, the routes were awarded
again to the company, but then revoked again. Continental was
forced to put the four new planes into storage in a hangar in New
Mexico, at a cost of $13 million per year. The routes were finally
awarded to the company a third time, but three of the 747s had been
sold to Iran in 1975.
That year, Continental posted a loss of $9.7 million, marking
its first annual loss since 1958 and only the second in the
company's 41-year history. The high cost of fuel in the mid-1970s
and a poor economic climate in the United States caused the airline
industry as a whole to experience a steady decline, and Continental
was no exception. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 only
exacerbated Continental's problems. The Act opened up some of the
company's most stable and profitable markets to competition from
other airline companies. The final hit came as Continental was
obligated to honor a number of different labor agreements that were
almost too expensive to maintain, because of the agreements'
built-in provisions for inflation.
In 1980, Six stepped down from the day-to-day operations of the
company and appointed Alvin L. Feldman as his replacement. Feldman
took control of a company that was in serious financial trouble. He
immediately attempted to negotiate a merger between Continental and
the struggling Los Angeles-based Western Airlines, believing that a
combination of forces potentially could lift both airlines back
into the black. The merger plans were cut short, however, by the
announcement that Texas Air Corporation had decided to increase its
stake in Continental from 4.24 percent to more than 50 percent.
Instead of a merger with Western Airlines, Continental's
employees made moves to purchase the airline themselves, led by two
company pilots named Paul Eckel and Chuck Cheeld. Employees
approved the plan by a large margin, and nine different banks
agreed to help finance the $185 million employee acquisition. But
months later, just before the purchase took place, the banks
withdrew their support and Texas Air was able to purchase a 50.84
percent majority stake in Continental. At the company's annual
meeting in 1982, Robert Six retired from Continental at the age of
74, after expressing his confidence in Texas Air Chairman Frank
Lorenzo to carry Continental back into profitability.
Texas Air completed the full acquisition of Continental Airlines
in October 1982. Just a year later, Lorenzo filed Chapter 11
proceedings for the company. Labor contracts were invalidated by
the courts, new work rules and pay scales were created, and just 56
hours later, Continental was back in the air. It was the first time
that an airline had attempted to continue operations while in
bankruptcy. Workers went on strike and formed picket lines.
Management worried that travel agents would stop writing tickets
for Continental and that passengers would be lost because of bad
publicity surrounding the company's financial situation.
To counter the bad publicity, Continental offered a $49 fare for
any nonstop flight that the airline ran. The idea was to bring
passengers aboard and let them see that the airline was capable of
functioning as usual, with the hope that most would then return
again. The promotion was a success; not only did it earn the
company return passengers, but labor opposition dissolved and
employees elected to return to work. Questionable strike tactics
led the pilots to repudiate their union. Soon 4,000 of the original
12,000 employees were rehired at reduced pay with an increased
workload. In response, by 1985 Continental's labor costs had been
reduced significantly. The following year, the company emerged from
bankruptcy as a nonunion airline that sported low fares due to the
industry's lowest labor costs.
Lorenzo then began acquiring numerous other airline companies
facing bankruptcy, including Eastern Airlines, People Express
Airlines, and Frontier Airlines. These new subsidiaries combined
with Continental (which had since absorbed Texas International
Airlines) to place Texas Air Corporation in more than $4.6 billion
of debt. The number of passengers flying Continental had steadily
increased since the strikes, however, and Continental was the only
division to begin its debt repayment program. As of September 1986,
Continental owed its creditors $925 million and was scheduled to
break even in a decade.
In 1988, Lorenzo sold Eastern's "Air Shuttle" service to Donald
Trump in an effort to keep the airline afloat. But a machinist's
strike and an ever declining financial situation forced Eastern
into bankruptcy the following year. The bankruptcy court then
removed Eastern from Texas Air's control. Texas Air changed its
name to Continental Airlines Holdings, Inc. to better reflect the
amalgamation of businesses that it represented, and Lorenzo sold
his stake in the company before resigning as chairman, CEO, and
president. Hollis Harris, the former president of Delta Air Lines,
was named as his replacement.
The 1990s and Beyond
In late 1990, fuel prices were at a high point and passenger
traffic was at a low point, due to effects of the Persian Gulf War.
Continental once again filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the
federal bankruptcy code, joining fellow subsidiary Eastern. But
Eastern could not recover and was forced to liquidate in 1991.
Harris left Continental Holdings in 1991 and was replaced by former
CFO Robert Ferguson. That same year, Continental sold its
Seattle-Tokyo route to American for $145 million, and the following
year, it sold most of its LaGuardia assets and six slots at
Washington, D.C.'s National Airport to USAir for $61 million.
Continental used the earnings to attempt to wrestle its way out of
bankruptcy for a second time.
In 1993, Continental emerged once again from bankruptcy and
underwent an extensive reorganization. All of the Continental
Airlines Holdings, Inc. subsidiaries and divisions were merged into
Continental Airlines, and new stock was issued to replace any
previously outstanding publicly held interests in the former parent
company. Ferguson remained at the new company's helm and began
orchestrating plans to restructure the airline's business focus as
well.
Under Ferguson, Continental went ahead with the rapid expansion
of its Continental Lite operation, which represented the company's
own version of Southwest Airlines' short-haul, no-meal, low-fare
flights. In less than a year, the program was expanded from the use
of 19 aircraft for 173 daily flights serving 14 cities, to 114
aircraft for 1,000 daily flights among 43 cities. The additional
aircraft were made available by eliminating the Denver hub and
redeploying planes and equipment to other locations. Unfortunately,
Continental Lite proved itself to be unprofitable and contributed
greatly to the company's 1994 loss of $613 million.
Going Forward in the Mid-1990s
Meanwhile, Gordon M. Bethune, a former Boeing Co. executive, had
joined Continental as president and COO in early 1994. Continental
Lite continued to lose money and Ferguson continued to push the
program forward until he was ousted late that year. He remained as
a director, but was replaced as CEO by Bethune, who immediately set
in place a "Go Forward Plan" to turn the ailing company around.
First, Bethune renegotiated Continental's debt, arranged
concessions from aircraft lessors, and got Boeing to agree to defer
delivery of any new planes on order. He then completely cleaned
house, sweeping out almost half of the company's high-ranking
executives and replacing them with his own managers from businesses
such as Northwest, American, and PepsiCo. He hired Gregory D.
Brenneman, a former Bain & Co. consultant with no previous airline
experience, as his new COO. He grounded 41 planes, slashed
capacity, and cut almost 5,000 jobs in 1995. He abolished most of
the company's loss-making Continental Lite services. Then, with a
guided focus solely on improving the airline's service to its
customers, Bethune saw results. The year 1995 not only saw the
company turn a profit for the first time since 1986, but saw it
turn a hefty profit of $224 million.
As the 1990s drew to a close, the company focused on the goal of
luring more high-paying business travelers back to its flights. To
do so, Bethune tied company bonuses to on-time performance, as a
means of improving the company's dismal last place standing among
major airlines for on-time performance in 1994. By early 1995, the
airline had risen to a first place rank for the first time in the
company's history. Bethune also brought back the frequent-flier
program perks that had been cut during Ferguson's reign and spent
$8 million to put food back onto some flights so that Continental
would appeal to hurried business travelers.
Although Continental was clearly on the road to recovery as it
neared the 21st century, it still faced many obstacles along its
path to success. Namely, without a unique attribute to offer
customers--aside from convenience in its three hub locations
only--the airline was having a difficult time convincing passengers
to stray from the other major airlines. Many analysts predicted
that it would take a merger to give Continental the marketing
capabilities and exposure necessary to pull itself to the top of
the heap. But if the turnaround created by Bethune in 1995 and 1996
was any indication of the future, then the company seemed to
possess the potential to regain the financial integrity that it had
possessed during its early years.
Flying to Win in the Late 1990s
Continental logged a record $319 million in earnings in 1996.
"Fly to Win" initiatives were introduced to keep the company moving
forward. The airline began standardizing the fleet, mostly around
the Boeing 737 for the main line and Embraer EMB 145 regional jets
for Continental Express. In 1997, Continental had $4.3 billion
worth of orders (127) and options (90) for Boeing 737s.
Although salaries had risen an average of 25 percent since 1994,
Continental employees were still paid less than their counterparts
at other airlines. Morale and attention to detail were boosted by
unique incentives, such as a payment of $65 to each employee every
time Continental finished in the top three on-time carriers in the
United States. The company reduced absenteeism by raffling off Ford
Explorers twice a year to those with perfect attendance. On-time
performance and motivated employees were key components in luring
demanding (and lucrative) business travelers back to the airline.
Part of what made Continental's renewed focus on quality so
striking was the cutbacks other airlines were making at the same
time.
With major markets in the United States nearly saturated,
Continental aimed to increase feeder traffic from abroad through
strategic alliances with the likes of Air France, Alitalia, and
Virgin Atlantic. By the late 1990s, Continental had accords with 17
airlines. The carrier lobbied the governments of Argentina and
Spain for a chance to invest in Aerolineas Argentinas, an
opportunity it lost to rival American Airlines. Continental also
had considerable operations of its own in Europe, Latin America,
and the Pacific. Flying from Newark, Continental was flying more
transatlantic flights than anyone in the New York area by 1999.
In 1998 Northwest Airlines acquired a 14 percent equity stake/54
percent voting interest in Continental from President and Chief
Operating Officer David Bonderman. The move headed off an attempt
by Delta Air Lines to acquire Continental. Northwest paid $519
million for the shares, an investment meant to launch a ten-year
strategic alliance. An antitrust lawsuit from the Justice
Department two years later pressured Northwest to sell its shares
back to Continental. Continental sold its own minority stake in
America West in 2000, and two years later ended a code-sharing
agreement with the Phoenix-based airline.
Scaling Back in 2001
Continental was the first among major U.S. airlines to cut its
staff in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. It let go
of 12,000 employees (20 percent of the workforce). Most of these,
however, would be called back to work within a year. Bethune soon
began lobbying the government for an industrywide federal
bailout.
A fourth quarter loss of $149 million left the airline $95
million in the red for the year, a relatively small setback
compared with those of other major airlines. The carrier parked 61
of its jets and 23 turboprops as it waited for traffic to return to
normal.
ExpressJet Holdings Inc., the parent company for the regional
jet unit Continental Express, was spun off in April 2002 in an IPO
that raised $480 million. The IPO had been delayed several months
due to the September 11 attacks. Continental owned 53 percent of
ExpressJet after the offering.
Continental was reported to have approached Delta Air Lines
about a possible merger in 1996. This did not happen, but in August
2002, Continental, Delta, and Northwest proposed a massive ten-year
code-share agreement. This would allow the airlines to sell tickets
on each other's flights, and to share frequent flier programs and
airport lounges. Together the three airlines had a 36 percent share
of domestic traffic. The alliance was a response to a pending
pairing of United and US Airways.
Principal Subsidiaries: Continental Micronesia, Inc.
Principal Competitors: AMR Corporation; Delta Air Lines
Inc.; UAL Corporation.
Further Reading:
- Antosh, Nelson, "Airlines Will Part Company; Continental to End
America West Link," Houston Chronicle, March 28, 2002, p.
B1.
- Armbruster, William, "Rebounding from 9/11: Continental
Restores Services, Works to Increase Revenue Yield," JoC
Week, February 18, 2002, p. 20.
- Banks, Howard, "A Sixties Industry in a Nineties Economy,"
Forbes, May 9, 1994, p. 107.
- Bethune, Gordon, and Scott Huler, "From Worst to First"
(excerpt from From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of
Continental's Remarkable Comeback), Fortune, May 25,
1998, pp. 185+.
- ------, From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of
Continental's Remarkable Comeback, New York: Wiley,
1998.
- Bond, David, "Recovery, Phase Two: Majors Change Strategy from
Super-Sized Alliances to Drinks Over the Atlantic; Carriers Stop
Waiting for the Market to Save Them," Aviation Week & Space
Technology, September 2, 2002, p. 24.
- Brenneman, Greg, "Right Away and All at Once: How We Saved
Continental," Harvard Business Review, September/October
1998, pp. 162+.
- Carey, Susan, Scott McCartney, and John Wilke, "Antitrust Suit
Could Complicate Future Airline Mergers--Northwest's Controlling
Stake in Continental Goes Under Scrutiny in Trial This Week,"
Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2000, p. B10.
- Clark, Andrew, "Sex, Scotch and Speed: Gordon Bethune, Chairman
and Chief Executive, Continental Airlines," Guardian
(Manchester, U.K.), September 21, 2002, p. 34.
- "Continental Cargo Continues Growth Streak," Journal of
Commerce and Commercial, September 29, 1997, pp. S18+.
- "ExpressJet IPO Proves a Flier," Airfinance Journal, May
2002, p. 19.
- Flint, Perry, "Speed Racer: Gordon Bethune Has Continental
Airlines on the Fast Track to Success," Air Transport World,
April 1997, pp. 33+.
- Flynn, Gillian, "A Flight Plan for Success," Workforce,
July 1997, pp. 72+.
- Goldberg, Laura, "A Woman Who Became a High Flier; Continental
Executive Is Still a Pilot," Houston Chronicle, February 26,
2000, p. C1.
- Hammonds, Keith H., "Continental's Turnaround Pilot," Fast
Company, December 2001, p. 96.
- Harris, Nicole, "Marketing Accord by Three Airlines Raises
Questions," Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2002, p.
A2.
- Huey, John, "Outlaw Flyboy CEOs" (interview of Gordon Bethune
and Herb Kelleher), Fortune, November 13, 2000, pp.
237+.
- Josselson, Steven, "Houston, We Have a Problem," Airfinance
Journal, February 2002, pp. 30-32.
- Knez, Marc, and Duncan Simester, "Firm-Wide Incentives and
Mutual Monitoring at Continental Airlines," Journal of Labor
Economics, October 2001, pp. 743-72.
- Lipowicz, Alice, "High-Flying Continental Revs Up Newark Plan;
While Rivals Trim Growth, Airline to Sharply Expand Foreign
Flights," Crain's New York Business, March 20, 2000, p.
32.
- Moore, Heidi, "ExpressJet Might Fly But Won't Float," Daily
Deal, September 18, 2001.
- Murphy, Michael, The Airline That Pride Almost Bought,
New York: Watts, 1986.
- Oehmke, Ted, "Plane Spoken," Texas Monthly, June 1998,
pp. 58-65.
- O'Reilly, Brian, "The Mechanic Who Fixed Continental: Believe
It or Not, CEO Gordon Bethune, a Former Navy Mechanic, Has Made
Continental the Best Airline in the U.S.," Fortune, December
20, 1989, pp. 176+.
- Scippa, Ray, Point to Point, The Sixty Year History of
Continental Airlines, Houston: Pioneer Publications, Inc.,
1994.
- Serling, Robert J., The Story of Robert Six and Continental
Airlines, New York: Doubleday, 1974.
- Stevens, Shannon, "Richard Metzner," Brandweek, October
20, 1997, pp. 98-101.
- Thompson, Richard, "Do the Right Thing," Corporate
Counsel, December 2001, pp. 54+.
- Van der Kraats, Stephan A., "Gaining a Competitive Edge Through
Airline Alliances," Competitiveness Review, Summer/Fall
2000, pp. 56+.
- Whitaker, Richard, "We Win Together," Airline Business,
July 1997, pp. 34+.
- Zellner, Wendy, "Back to 'Coffee, Tea, or Milk?,'" Business
Week, July 3, 1995, p. 52.
- ------, "The Right Place, the Right Time," Business
Week, May 27, 1996, p. 74.
- ------, "Why Continental's CEO Fell to Earth," Business
Week, November 7, 1994, p. 32.
Source: International Directory of Company
Histories, Vol. 52. St. James Press, 2003.
