Customer Reviews

American Eagle: The Ascent of Bob Crandall and American Airlines

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Dan Reed writes an organized and balanced story of American Airlines and the company's president, Robert Crandall. Bob Crandall was a innovative leader in the marketing and operation of United State's airlines.

Crandall used the SABRE computerized system of reservartions, the practice of gathering passengers in regional "hub" airports to fill big planes operating between major hubs and the frequent flyer programs to build American Airlines the nation's first airline during the years following the 1978 de-regulation of tha airline industry.

This is an exciting book which correctly predicted in 1993, that the great period of airline innovation may be ending. The only shortcoming in the book is that it was published too soon. In the fall of 1993, American's flight attendants went on strike which symbolized the real end of the period of turmoil and innovation which this book had predicted.

This book is a great book for informing the reader about how American Airlines got from the early 70's to the time the book was published. It speaks of how AA conducts its business and how they improved their network and the way business is conducted. With that being said, the book is just a drain on an airlines entusiasts time. The book is very repetative and very biased about American Airlines. This would have been a great book if the author didn't think of AA as the gods of the sky. The book speaks of AA's financial and route problems, but when the author compares the airlines to a competative airline, AA was always doing things better then the competition. No company is perfect, but I don't know why the author has to justify everything that AA has done wrong.