AN INTERVIEW IN REWIND MONDAY!

Yesterday marked an amazing 12 year Anniversary where it was my Honor to land my first big magazine journalism interview with an aviation CEO and visionary, my friend and mentor, the late Marty Shugrue. On Monday, we will ":rewind" back to that interview in an unprecedented event I have never before seen on a BLOG. But before we get into how I became a commercial aviation journalist, a little background drama would be helpful.

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After taking a stand on principle during a heated board meeting not to merge the original Pan American World Airways with a very weak (and now defunct) second incarnation of Braniff International Airlines, a December 21, 1987 ouster of Pan Am Chairman C. Edward Acker and Vice Chairman Martin R. Shugrue Jr. in exchange for union concessions at Pan Am actually caught union officials off guard. Marty was very popular with labor and as one official cited, "We wanted Acker's ouster not Shugrue'". In fact everyone in the business community generally, and the commercial aviation industry more specifically at the time reacted with genuine shock that Shugrue would be included in the mid-day purge.

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Soon after, Frank Lorenzo, then-Chairman of Texas Air Corporation (Texas International, Continental, New York Air, Frontier, People Express and Eastern Airlines) recruited Marty to become President of Continental Airlines. One year and one day after his appointment, the mercurial Lorenzo (who had overseen a sloppy merger of all Texas Air subsidiaries into the Continental banner under Marty's predecessor Thomas G. Plaskett), surprisingly dismissed Marty. Amazingly, Marty and Frank remained cordial at this parting. Some months later, Lorenzo secretly commissioned a top secret study of merging the heavily unionized Eastern Airlines into non-union Continental. Dubbed "Project Red" and hired Marty to lead a panel of airline executives and analysts in a rigorous two-month plan to study whether or not the merger of the two airline systems made economic sense.

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Later, after one of the nations most visible and widely felt union strikes in history ensued at Eastern Airlines under Lorenzo's tenure, the Federal Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York overseeing Eastern's Chapter 11 case ruled Frank "incompetent to reorganize Eastern's estate". The Court Trustee Harry Jones recommended Marty Shugrue as the first-ever Court -appointed Trustee to salvage an airline--Eastern, which by April, 1990 was reduced in size by one-third. It's employees were demoralized and it's passengers felt alienated, Shugrue's appointment came at a time when a Japanese consortium of businessmen in New York City quietly negotiated with Marty to develop a strategy to buy United Airlines with cash and install Shugrue as the CEO. During these meetings, Shugrue received a summons to the Chapter 11 proceedings with Eastern. When the Japanese businessmen saw this, they got cold feet and returned to Japan without further action. Marty was appointed Trustee of Eastern Airlines. Lorenzo was officially out. And the newswires around the world flashed the news! It was a "poetic victory". Under Shugrue's tenure at Continental, he installed numerous financial controls that literally helped save that carrier from a micromanaging Lorenzo, who while a financial genius, lacked any sensitivity to the personnel equation at his companies. And according to television journalist Barbara Walters, who interviewed Frank, he became "the most hated man in America". Losing control of Eastern dealt a devastating blow to Lorenzo and the Texas Air empire--briefly the largest in the world--even topping Aeroflot. To place further distance, Lorenzo resigned in 1991 and Texas Air was renamed Continental Airline Holdings. Here's where my interest came in.

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Prior to becoming an aviation journalist, I had no interest in the airline business. I simply fell into it as a Psychology major in college. After seeing Frank Lorenzo profiled in a 1987 issue of Texas Monthly magazine, the personologist in me was piqued. How could a young, entrepreneurial man become so driven to bring a corporate raiders mentality to declare a war on labor to achieve his goal of running the world's largest airline system through brutally unorthodox methods only to lose control of the very business that he created? So, I started studying the labor situation at Continental, industrial psychologist studies of it's workforce, the number of divorces emanating from the strain placed upon Continental's top Lieutenants, the defections to other carriers of top management, etc. All of this intrigued me.

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Then came the morning of April 19, 1990 when The Wall Street Journal profiled an airline executive named Marty Shugrue who was brought in to what was then considered the most complicated bankruptcy proceeding in the nation. So, I began to spend hours at the Reference Library to learn about this new leader. What fascinated me further about this story was that Shugrue had settled into a position unique to all of corporate America. Upon his appointment as Trustee, he replaced the role of Eastern's Chairman, President, CEO and board of directors in one fell swoop. He quickly began to remake Eastern's new management team and set about to reinvent Eastern from the worst carrier that nobody cared to fly into what Frequent Flyer magazine would later dub "The best airline in America right now". Further, he reached out to the embattled employees with a message assuring them that the nightmare of the former management was over. It was a new beginning. And definitely the classiest makeover of a company (literally in ruins) that I have ever witnessed. So, in essence, I became "bitten by the bug", the adrenalin highs of studying this industry and learning what made each carrier a distinct entity: their history, their corporate atmosphere, their strengths and weaknesses, marketing plans, fleet planning, route systems and in some cases even Leadership. All of which has sadly changed only 13 years later.

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So, we're going to go back to May, 5th, 1994 where a slightly younger Michael Manning who had been corresponding with Shugrue by snail mail, managed to snag an afternoon in Eastern's 9th Floor suite of what was historically known as Building 16 on the outskirts of Miami International Airport. After more than three hours, some photos taken of our session, and later my graphic art design for an aircraft livery for the "New" Eastern Airlines Marty Shugrue was trying to launch with existing assets yet unsold (Eastern ceased flying on January 18, 1991) I felt it would be fun to present my full length interview of what became one of the most exciting days of my life. I would be meeting the man who became my Mentor and role model four years earlier. Furthemore, many of Marty's projections for the 21st Century in commercial aviation have come true.

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We remained good friends until his sudden death in March, 1999. I graduated just three months later in June with my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati. As we graduates entered Shoemaker Center on the U.C. campus from the nearly 100 degree heat, I took my seat amidst blaring trumpets--great pageantry--and stared at the banners hung from the ceiling. I focused on a banner from 1962, the year that Shugrue graduated with a B.A. degree in Economics from Providence College. I was fortunate to know such a bigger-than-life, charismatic, man who relished a good challenge--and brought out the very best in people. Although tomorrow's BLOG will be the longest interview you'll likely read here on my site (or anywhere else), but I guarantee you a fascinating journey!

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Welcome Aboard!