My brother Tango is right on the money (pun intended), except that I would back up the beginning of serious problems to Frank Lorenzo and Eastern Airlines. Lorenzo kept going back to the pilots to bail the airline out of financial trouble while he and his cronies were the only people making money on a money-losing operation. It still boggles my mind that he got away with selling Eastern's share of the reservation system ("System One", as I recall) to related parties (i.e. related to him) for about a third of its real market value, just to suck Eastern as dry as possible.

[This message has been edited by RichG (edited 03-13-2001).]