From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback

Chapter 2. The Last Suppers, or Whose Problem Is It?

On October 24, 1994, I did a very significant thing in the executive suite of Continental Airlines, on the twentieth floor of its Houston headquarters.

I opened the doors.

The doors to the executive suite were locked, and you needed an ID to get through. Security cameras added to the feeling of relaxed charm. The paranoid security may have been a leftover from the days when the conflicts between Frank Lorenzo and the unions made Lorenzo fear for his personal safety—one flight attendant reported that he would not even drink a soda on one of his own airplanes if someone else had opened it for him—but it was still there. The place felt like a snake pit. It was horrible. There were little emergency alarm buttons, panic buttons in case somebody came in to beat somebody up.

Which, looking back, probably seemed fairly likely.

So the day I began running the company, I opened the doors. I wasn't afraid of my employees, and I wanted everybody to know it. I opened the doors and kicked a wedge underneath. For the first time in a decade, we were genuinely open for business up there.

I had to wonder whether I was a little premature, though, because I wasn't exactly in charge. How that came to be is kind of a long story, but it shows how confused things were at Continental at that point, and it shows one way of getting people's attention.

Anyhow, days after I started there I knew the atmosphere in the executive suite was the first thing I had to change: ...