Eastern Air Lines


Eastern Air Lines, also colloquially known as Eastern, was a major American airline from 1926 to 1991. Before its dissolution, it was headquartered at Miami International Airport in an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County, Florida.
Eastern was one of the "Big Four" domestic airlines created by the Spoils Conferences of 1930, and was headed by World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker in its early years. It had a near monopoly in air travel between New York and Florida from the 1930s until the 1950s and dominated this market for decades afterward.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during the deregulation, labor disputes and high debt loads strained the company under the leadership of former astronaut Frank Borman. Frank Lorenzo acquired Eastern in 1985 and moved many of its assets to his other airlines, including Continental Airlines and Texas Air. After continued labor disputes and a crippling strike in 1989, Eastern ran out of money and was liquidated in 1991.
American Airlines obtained many of Eastern's routes from Miami to Latin America and the Caribbean, while Delta Air Lines, Eastern's main competitor at Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, acquired many of Eastern's Lockheed L-1011 aircraft. USAir acquired 11 of Eastern's 25 Boeing 757-225 aircraft.
Eastern pioneered hourly air shuttle service between New York City, Washington, DC and Boston in 1961 as the Eastern Air Lines Shuttle. It took over the South American route network of Braniff International upon its shutdown in 1982 and also served London Gatwick in 1985 via a DC-10 "Golden Wings" service. Although Eastern announced on their March 2, 1986 timetable that it would serve Madrid, Spain effective May 1, 1986, the service did not commence. The only scheduled trans-Atlantic service Eastern provided was Miami to London Gatwick, commencing on July 15, 1985 and was discontinued in 1986 and replaced with codeshare flights from Atlanta via British Caledonian Airways.

History

Origins

Eastern Air Lines was a composite of assorted air travel corporations, including Florida Airways and Pitcairn Aviation. In the late 1920s, Pitcairn Aviation won a contract to fly mail between New York City and Atlanta, Georgia on Mailwing single-engine aircraft. In 1929, Clement Keys, the owner of North American Aviation, purchased Pitcairn. In 1930, Keys changed the company's name to Eastern Air Transport. After being purchased by General Motors and experiencing a change in leadership after the Airmail Act of 1934, the airline became known as Eastern Air Lines.

Growth under Rickenbacker

In 1938 World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker bought Eastern from General Motors. The complex deal was concluded when Rickenbacker presented Alfred P. Sloan with a certified check for $3.5 million. In March 1939 Eastern had 15 weekday departures from Newark, two from Chicago to Miami, one from Tampa to Atlanta and one from Tallahassee to Memphis. Those flights and their returns were Eastern's whole scheduled operation; it fit on one page in the Airways Guide. Then as later, Eastern was the fourth largest airline in the country by passenger-miles.
Rickenbacker pushed Eastern into a period of growth and innovation; for a time Eastern was the most profitable airline in the post-war era, never needing state subsidy. In the late 1950s Eastern's position was eroded by subsidies to rival airlines and the arrival of the jet age. On October 1, 1959, Rickenbacker's position as CEO was taken over by Malcolm A. MacIntyre, a brilliant lawyer but a man inexperienced in airline operations.' Rickenbacker's ouster was largely due to his reluctance to acquire expensive jets as he underestimated their appeal to the public. A new management team headed by Floyd D. Hall took over on 16 December 1963, and Rickenbacker left his position as Director and Chairman of the Board on December 31, 1963, aged 73.
In 1956 Eastern bought Colonial Airlines, giving the airline its first routes to Canada.

The Jet Age

In November 1959, Eastern Air Lines opened its Chester L. Churchill-designed Terminal 1 at New York City's Idlewild International Airport. In 1960, Eastern's first jets, Douglas DC-8-21s, started to take over the longer flights, like the non-stops from Chicago and New York to Miami. The DC-8s were joined in 1962 by the Boeing 720 and in 1964 by the Boeing 727-100, which Eastern had helped Boeing to develop. On February 1, 1964, Eastern was the first airline to fly the 727. Shortly after that, "Captain Eddie" Rickenbacker retired and a new image was adopted, which included the now famous hockey stick design, officially Caribbean Blue over Ionosphere Blue. Eastern was also the first US carrier to fly the Airbus A300 and the launch customer for the Boeing 757.
On April 30, 1961, Eastern inaugurated Eastern Air Lines Shuttle. Initially 95-seat Lockheed Constellation 1049s and 1049Cs left New York-LaGuardia every two hours, 8 am to 10 pm, to Washington National and to Boston. Flights soon became hourly, 7 am to 10 pm out of each city. Shuttle emphasized convenience and simplicity—revolutionary in an era when air travel was considered a luxury.
Internationalization began as Eastern opened routes to markets such as Santo Domingo and Nassau, Bahamas. Services from San Juan, Puerto Rico's Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport were expanded. In 1967, Eastern purchased Mackey Airlines, a small air carrier primarily operating in Florida and the Bahamas as part of this expansion.
Eastern bought the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar and Airbus A300 widebody jets; the former would become known in the Caribbean as El Grandote. Although Eastern had purchased four 747s, the delivery slots were sold to Trans World Airlines when Eastern decided to purchase the L-1011.
Due to massive delays in the L-1011 program, mainly due to problems with the Rolls-Royce RB211 engines, Eastern leased two Boeing 747-100s from Pan Am between 1970 and 1972 and operated the aircraft between Chicago and San Juan as well as from New York to Miami and San Juan.
Just before Walt Disney World opened in 1971, Eastern became its "official airline". It remained the official airline of Walt Disney World and sponsored a ride at the Magic Kingdom park until its contracting route network forced Disney to switch to Delta shortly before Eastern's 1989 bankruptcy filing.
The famous "Wings of Man" campaign in the late 1960s was created by advertising agency Young & Rubicam, and restored Eastern's tarnished image until the late 1970s, when former astronaut Frank Borman became president and it was replaced by a new campaign, "We Have To Earn Our Wings Every Day". The new campaign, which featured Borman as a spokesperson, was used until the mid-to-late 1980s.
Under bankruptcy, Eastern launched a "100 Days" campaign, in which it promised to "become a little bit better every day".

Turmoil

In 1975, Eastern was headquartered at 10 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. After Frank Borman became president of Eastern Air Lines in late 1975, he moved Eastern's headquarters from Rockefeller Center to Miami-Dade County, Florida.
Eastern's massive Atlanta hub was in direct competition with Delta Air Lines, where the two carriers competed heavily to neither's benefit. Delta's less-unionized work force and slowly expanding international route network helped lead it through the turbulent period following deregulation in 1978.
In 1980, a Caribbean hub was started at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport near San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1982, Eastern acquired Braniff's South American route network. By 1985, Eastern was the largest IATA airline in terms of passengers and operated in 26 countries on three continents.
During this era, Eastern's fleet was split between their "silver-colored hockey stick" livery and their "white-colored hockey stick" livery.
In 1983 Eastern became the launch customer of Boeing's 757, which was ordered in 1978. Borman felt that its low cost of operation would make it an invaluable asset to the airline in the years to come. However, higher oil prices failed to materialize and the debt created by this purchase coupled with the Airbus A300 purchases in 1977 contributed to the February 1986 sale to Frank Lorenzo's Texas Air. At that time, Eastern was paying over $700,000 in interest each day before they sold a ticket, fueled, or boarded a single aircraft.
Starting about 1985, Eastern offered "Moonlight Specials", with passenger seats on overnight flights scheduled for cargo from thirty freight companies. The flights, which operated between midnight and 7 am, served 18 cities in the United States connecting mainly to Houston. Eric Schmitt of The New York Times said that the services were "a hybrid of late-night, red-eye flights and the barebones People Express approach to service." The holds of the aircraft were reserved for cargo such as express mail, machine tool parts, and textiles. Because of this, the airline allowed each passenger to take up to two carry-on bags. The airline charged $10 for each checked bag, which was shipped standby. The airline charged between 50 cents and $3 for beverages and snacks. Bunny Duck, an Eastern flight attendant quoted in The New York Times, said that the passengers on the special flights were "a cross section of families, college kids, illegal aliens and weirdos from L.A.".
Eastern began losing money as it faced competition from no-frills airlines, such as People Express, which offered lower fares. In an attempt to differentiate itself from its bargain competitors, Eastern began a marketing campaign stressing its quality of service and its rank of highly experienced pilots.

Sale to Texas Air

Unable to keep up, Borman agreed to the sale of the airline in 1986 to Texas Air. Led by Frank Lorenzo, he had already purchased Continental Airlines and lost a bidding war for TWA to Carl Icahn.
In February 1987, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a $9.5 million fine against Eastern Air Lines for safety violations, which was the largest fine assessed against an airline until American Airlines was fined $24.2 million in 2010.
In 1988, Phil Bakes, the president of Eastern Air Lines, announced plans to lay off 4,000 employees and eliminate and reduce service to airports in the Western United States; he said that the airline was going "back to our roots" in the East. At the time, Eastern was the largest corporate employer in the Miami area and remained so after the cuts. John Nordheimer wrote in The New York Times that Eastern's prominence in the Miami area decreased as the city became a finance and trade center and experienced population increase-based economic growth, instead of a purely tourism-based growth.
During Lorenzo's tenure, Eastern was crippled by severe labor unrest. Asked to accept deep cuts in pay and benefits, on March 4, 1989, Lorenzo locked out Eastern's mechanics and ramp service employees, represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Concerned that Lorenzo's successful breaking of the IAM would do the same to the pilots' and flight attendants' unions, the pilots represented by Air Line Pilots Association and flight attendants represented by the Transport Workers Union called a sympathy strike, which effectively shut down the airline's domestic operations. Non-contract employees, including airport gate and ticket counter agents and reservation sales agents, could not honor the strike. Due to the lockout and sympathy strike, cancelled flights resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in revenue.
In 1989, Lorenzo sold Eastern Air Lines Shuttle to real estate mogul Donald Trump while selling other parts of Eastern to his Texas Air holding company and its subsidiary, Continental Airlines, at terms disadvantageous to Eastern. That same year, George Berry, the Georgia Industry and Trade Commissioner, asked Eastern to consider moving its headquarters from Miami to Atlanta.
As a result of the strike, a weakened airline structure, high fuel prices, an inability to compete after deregulation and other financial problems, Eastern filed for bankruptcy protection on March 9, 1989, which allowed Lorenzo to continue operating the airline with non-union employees. However, in 1991, the courts removed Eastern from Texas Air's control, citing neglect and mismanagement. The court appointed Martin Shugrue as Eastern's trustee to oversee its operations. Eastern tried to remain in business in an attempt to correct its cash flow, but to no avail.
Ultimately, Easten Airlines stopped flying at midnight on Saturday, January 19, 1991. The previous evening, company agents, unaware of the decision, continued to take reservations and told callers that the airline was not closing. Following the announcement, 5,000 of the 18,000 employees immediately lost their jobs. Of the remaining employees, reservation agents were told to report to work at their regular times, while other employees were told not to report to work unless asked to do so. The Eastern shutdown eliminated many airline industry jobs in the Miami and New York City areas.

Company Slogans

EasternCaribairMackeyMidetColonial
195116308--94
195535831181129
196047642722
196579567441--
197014671107--
197518169---
198126501----
198533086----
198911592----

Destinations

Fleet

Eastern Air Lines flew many different types of aircraft throughout its history. Number of individual aircraft operated in parentheses.

AircraftFleetIntroducedRetiredNotes
Airbus A300B4341977First U.S. airline operator of this type.
Boeing 7201519611970
Boeing 727-100751964Launch customer.
Boeing 727-200/Adv991968
Boeing 747-100319711973Leased from Pan American World Airways before the L-1011 arrived.
Boeing 747-200--For planned services to Europe, bought from Qantas.
One aircraft painted but never delivered, 1978.
Boeing 757-200251983Eastern as co-launch customer along with British Airways.
Convair 3402
Convair 440 Metropolitan2019571970
Curtiss Commando15
Curtiss Condor19301934
Douglas DC-214
Douglas DC-37619361953
Douglas DC-43819461960
Douglas DC-7B5419531966
Douglas DC-8-211619601973
Douglas DC-8-50519641971
Douglas DC-8-611719691973
Douglas DC-8-63619691974
Douglas DC-9-141519651980
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-31821967
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-50261978
Fokker F.VII
Ford Tri-Motor19301932
Lockheed Model 10 Electra519351936
Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation7619511968
Lockheed L-188 Electra4019591977First and only turboprop aircraft flown by Eastern Air Lines in mainline operation.
Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar401972Launch customer along with Trans World Airlines.
Lockheed JetStar219701973For corporate use.
Martin 4-0-46019511962Eastern Air Lines was the largest operator of the type in operation.
McDonnell Douglas DC-10319851990Formerly operated by Alitalia leased to operate long range service to Europe and South America.
Pitcairn MailwingFirst aircraft to begin operations as Eastern Air Transport Inc.

Eastern Express, Eastern Metro Express, Eastern Partner and Caribair

Several regional and commuter airlines provided passenger feed for Eastern via code sharing agreements with their aircraft liveries reflecting the Eastern mainline paint scheme. There were a number of brandings including: Eastern Express, Eastern Atlantis Express, and Eastern Metro Express. LIAT, a Caribbean-based airline, also operated Eastern Partner service.
Eastern Express air carriers and their aircraft included:
Eastern Atlantis Express was operated by Atlantis Airlines with BAe Jetstream 31 aircraft.
Eastern Metro Express was operated by Metro Airlines and was based at Eastern's Atlanta hub operating British Aerospace BAe Jetstream 31 and de Havilland Canada DHC-8-100 Dash 8 turboprops.
Eastern Partner was operated by a Caribbean-based airline, Leeward Islands Air Transport, with turboprop service between Eastern's San Juan hub and Antigua, St. Kitts and St. Maarten.
Eastern also worked closely with another Caribbean-based airline, Caribair . The June 13, 1967 Eastern system timetable lists connecting flights operated by Caribair Convair 640 turboprops with service between Eastern's San Juan hub and St. Croix and St. Thomas. By 1970, San Juan-based Caribair had become an all-jet airline operating McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 aircraft serving fourteen Caribbean islands as well as Miami with the air carrier subsequently being acquired by Eastern in 1973.

Accidents and incidents

Fatal accidents

The airline suffered numerous hijackings in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
In 2011, a group purchased the intellectual property, including trademarks, of Eastern Air Lines and formed the Eastern Air Lines Group. The group announced in early 2014 that it had filed an application with the United States Department of Transportation for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, which will be followed by certification with the Federal Aviation Administration. The new airline began service through charter and wet-lease flights out of Miami International in late 2014 with Boeing 737-800 jetliners painted in the classic Eastern "hockey stick" livery. The IATA and ICAO codes of the original airline, as well as its callsign, are now used by the new iteration of Eastern Air Lines. After a sale to Swift Air, the trademarks were passed on to Eastern Airlines, LLC in 2018. On January 12, 2020, after nearly two decades of being officially defunct, the first flight of the renewed Eastern Airlines landed at JFK airport, heralding a new era for the brand name.