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

Chapter 3. Fly to Win, or You Can Make a Pizza So Cheap Nobody Wants to Eat It

Think of a patient in an emergency room. What does the emergency team do when they first get a patient? Same two things, every time: Check the breathing, check the pulse. Nothing else is going to mean much if the breathing and the pulse aren't there. Maybe you have just the thing for a rash on the leg; maybe you have a great new experimental cure for lung cancer; maybe you've even found a cure for AIDS. But, whatever the problem, if there's no respiration or pulse—or if the patient is bleeding to death—all the miracle cures in the world aren't going to help. So you have to focus in like a laser on the things that, if not dealt with immediately, will put you out of business, will kill the patient before the long-term therapies can kick in.

We were that patient. Our pulse was money, and I'll tell you all about how we stanched the bleeding and gave Continental a heart massage in the next chapter.

Our breathing was our product, and it was lousy. That was the other thing we needed to start fixing immediately.

We could see from the start that it wasn't going to be easy. We had problems with where we flew, we had problems with what we flew, we had problems with how we flew... and we had problems with who was flying.

Fly to Win is about our market: determining our target market, making our product fit that market in price and position, finding the amenities our customers want and will pay for, and making it easy ...