Dear All:
Yes I do remember a great Sales and Marketing Dept. plus the Adv. Agency MS&R. What a combo. We were able to sell and market the great front line employees of PI because what we said in sales calls and in ads were the truth. No hype just truth. We had whole series of ads on the people of PI and not planes and destinations. It said "Our planes don't fly faster our people just work harder and are happier."
PI never did retreat from the early LCC like PE or NYAir. Let me tell you some of the typical things PI-RDU -SS team did to be the first carrier to make PE pull out of a market and NYAir shut down a complete hub at RDU. THe first Hub to fail after deregulation. Also no MBA was needed just some good old "Andy Griffith common sense and a touch of some Barney Fife luck"
NYAIR: I flew them on a competitve review flight from SAV-RDU-DCA-LGA-BOS flt several times. They where the first to serve bagels on every leg of the flight. At that time in the early 80's bagels were considered stale doughnuts. I flew beside a man that stood up at the flt. attn. and said, if I have to eat anogher one of those stale doughnuts I'm going to puke and never fly this airline again.
NYAir had also gotten the US Gov contract to be the carrier of choice to DCA,LGA and BOS. These were three of the larger markets from RDU and crucial to PI. They under bid us on the rates by a few dollars. I spoke to the Travel Mgr. for EPA and NIEHS and asked her was there anything we could do to get back those psrgs forced to take NY. She said no. by the US Gov contract she had to use them with very few exceptions. I then asked he what she thought about the bagels they served on the planes. She did say that she did not like them as they did not constiute a meal according to Gov regs and she was having to give all travelers meal voucher for trips to these three markets. I asked her what would we could do to make her a breakfast that would count as meal and she could then leagally move them to PI. She said a sausage biscut was the minimum with coffee. I called INT HQ and we made two small adjustments, we put sausage biscuts on the morning flts and we also moved the dept time 1 minute backwards. NY left at 6:59 so she had to give meal voucher because flt left before 7AM. We moved flt from 6:59AM to 7:00 AM. That meant she could move all goverment psr from NY to PI even though they had the Gov contract as she did not have to give out meal vouchers because of bagels and 6:59 AM dept time. She could now save on her travel budget for air and not spend it on meals in DCA,LGA and BOS. In a few months NYAir actually closed the door on RDU hub at midnight and next day after closing nobody was there at ticket counter or gates. They just left town at midnight. Some PI Good Old Boys in Sales Dept that US ran off later beat the first Harvard MBA that then ran NYAIR and went on to become NWA VP of marketing. He now is teaching back at Harvard as an airline expert and to this day never knew a sauage biscuit and one minute took his airline down.
PE: We differeniated our self from PE. We ran print ads that showed what you got for $29 from RDU to EWR. PE- a seat. PI: FF Miles, boardiing pass and seat assgment in advance, free coffee before flight in public gate area, free Wall St Journal to read. More leg room, more flights, better on time service, inflight meals, PI Presidential Suites for the business man at both RDU and EWR. Loading bridge to plane, Newer 737's,new upgraded ternimals and the list went on and on. We put them side by side and PE had one checkmark for RDU-EWR $29. PI had about 15 check marks for the same $29. PE got dispurate and lowered the fare to $19. We matched and ran the same ads. Then PE was very dispurate and needed cash so they jumped from $19 to $49. PI made the decision to stay at $19 and see what happened. Guess who won that market! PI and it was the first market that PE ever pulled out of. No Harvard MBA invovlved in this, just great people on the planes and great people at the airport.
AA Hub: Although AA hub did fold under USAir times it was PI that laid the ground work to keep them from hurting PI's CLT hub. We came up with to cleaver ads, the first was run the very next day after AA announce it plans for RDU. It said" The Airline of the Year is not coming to RDU in 1985, it been here since 1948.!"
I met R. Crandell la few years later at a Press conference in RDU and he said it was the best ad ever against AA. So good that he said we could not responsed to it. He also said he had more respect for PI then USAir did and they owned us at that point. He knew what would happen, he told me USAir mgt would take us down and do internally what he r what he could not. He said they will ruin PI in a short time so AA was not worried longterm about PI.
We also looked and noticed that hub was in RDU but orginaning times for flights were mid AM and Mid PM and you could not do day trips to key markets on AA. PI ran an ad that said "AA's RDU hub is off-time even when it's on time!" Then it showed PI better flt times to DCA, LGA, EWR and BOS.
We held our own until USAir took over and the battle was lost, all self inflicted is what made it so sad.
Give me great people everytime over Harvard MBA's and I will beat you every time. Piedmont proved that time and time again. PI never really paid that well but you never heard any complants from empolyees, nobody ever left the company and you all chipped in and help make the Pride of Piedmont work. It was rewarded by being the smallest airline ever to win ATW's Airline of the Year and that is something USAirways will never win. PI culture was opposite of US we pulled together and US seems to pull apart. That is a reflection on mgt of the companies.
Prayers to PI family members still at US. There is life after US/PI merger debacle!
