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

Chapter 13. Crop Duster's Son

I talk and talk about what we've accomplished at Continental— how we took a broken thing and made it work, how we took a group of people who were dispirited and disgusted and enabled them to work together and win—and sometimes people get a little frustrated. Not because I talk too much, though I suppose that's possible. But people get kind of irate because they think it's easy for me to talk about making change—after all, I'm the chief executive officer of a huge company. Of course, I can make change, they figure. I'm at the top.

I try to gently remind them that I actually was not born the chief executive of a huge airline. I started off as a baby, just like they did—a baby brought up by a divorced mom in San Antonio, Texas, who was doing the best she could under tough circumstances. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth—not even a silver dipstick.

The first business lesson I recall learning was from my mom, and I applied it recently during a stop in Washington.

After a long day of speaking with legislators about changes in the airline ticketing tax structure, I was ready to go home. I waited in the crew lounge for my plane back to Houston. The flight was a continuation of one that had left from Newark, and it was about an hour late.

If you want to see discomfort, you ought to try hanging around the crew lounge of an airline when the CEO of the airline is in there and his plane is late. Nobody wants to make eye contact, everybody is worried, and ...