Start negotiating today with Marriott, Hilton, Avis, Honolulu tourism board, Busch, Hertz, the Mouse, Las Vegas Visitors & Convention, or anyone else desperate to revive travel. Work out some *seriously* attractive promotions - not just window-dressing.

Pick the right grim-but-warm exec spokesman -- an Iacocca sort who can peddle the message on TV ala "We need to get America flying again ... and Air X is going to earn your business. Every mile, every day."

For the next 60 days, buy some serious prime time & have the pitchman sell those promotions. For travel booked and flown during that period:
-- Settle for breaking even on the high-margin business routes, but bump up the load factor.
Offer TRIPLE miles for all full-fare seats in First or Business, plus a *meaningful" break on a rental car (or hotel in available markets).
Fill the back through: giving discount 5-day-advance coach fares, offering DOUBLE miles to all of your own FFs ... and to any other airline's FFs. Advertise that you'll have snacks on every flight over an hour, hot meals on every flight over two. "At Air X, we know that earning your business means going the extra mile, not cutting corners."

-- Lose a bunch on the tourist market, but send load factors through the roof & get the market share now.
Pick a couple dozen vacation routes and advertise *real* hotel-car-airfare packages for Disney, Busch, Hawaii, Miami Beach - whoever will help pay the freight. Make it good enough that nobody can match it.
Offer TRIPLE miles to your own FFs, and DOUBLE miles to first-timers who join. Have gate agents at the vacation destination airport meet the plane to hand out some sort of logo-embossed trinkets as pax leave the concourse.
Even if it means leasing a few widebodies out of the desert, put enough cheaps seats on the low-profit but tourist-friendly routes so that LOTS of people have flown Air X by Thanksgiving season.

For any pax who book and fly during the 60-day period, offer a 20 percent across-the-board discount on their next r/t, valid anytime between Thanksgiving through Valentine's Day.

Adapt a page from Iacocca's book; announce a 30 percent exec pay cut for 2001 and 2002, and a freeze on management and exec options or bonuses. Ask the unions for 10-20 percent pay cuts (pilots highest, mechanics next, FAs and low-level ground staff give back the least) ... and either provide 'em with a generous stock-purchase discount, or a generous severence package in event of layoffs.