Grounded: Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines [Paperback]

Aaron Bernstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 19, 1999 | ISBN-10: 1893122131 | ISBN-13: 978-1893122130

The inside account of how Frank Lorenzo took over a sputtering Airlines and flew it into the ground. With access to the major players -- the guarded Lorenzo and his inner circle, former Eastern Airlines president Frank Borman, Peter Ueberroth, and union boss Charlie Bryan -- author Aaron Bernstein explains how Lorenzo brought a corporate raider's mentality to running a business, and how its failure marked a watershed in the 1980s "Age of Greed."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this tense, event-by-event account of the crash of Eastern Airlines in the late 1980s, as suspenseful as an air-disaster movie, Business Week reporter Bernstein presents Lorenzo as an obsessed anti-unionist. The Texas-based aviation empire he founded was crowned by the takeover of ailing Eastern Airlines, and his treatment of employees led to bitter, prolonged strikes and lawsuits that threatened to cripple national transportation. Union efforts on the employees' behalf to secure a purchaser for the near-bankrupt airline were thwarted by Lorenzo, who, in accordance with a 1990 court order, was removed from management in favor of a trustee, an order that the author considers a watershed in the labor policy of the Republican era. Author tour.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This story of the acquisition of Eastern Airlines by the Texas Air Corporation is a fascinating expose of management ineptitude, likely to become a classic case study. Bernstein gathered his material while reporting on labor matters for Business Week , and he focuses on the personalities in the deal. As he tells it, many important decisions that resulted in Texas Air gaining control of 15 percent of the air traffic in the United States were either misjudgments or were done in the heat of emotion. While Bernstein is critical of both labor and management, it is clear that he believes management caused a great deal of unnecessary misfortune for itself. This is a good companion to The Battle for Eastern Airlines , a video from PBS's excellent Frontline series. For more information, contact PBS's video service, 703-739-5380.
-Ed. -- Joseph Barth, U.S. Military Acad. Lib., West Point, N.Y.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Beard Books (January 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893122131
• ISBN-13: 978-1893122130
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #823,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, June 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Grounded: Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines (Paperback)

Excellent book, well researched and very well written. Accurately portrays the events that lead to Eastern's demise. I am no fan of unions. But, Lorenzo displayed a blatant calloused disregard for Eastern, it's people, and everything connected with it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brian Wayne Wells, Esquire, reviews "Grounded", January 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Grounded: Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines (Hardcover)

This is a short book but a good telling of the tale of the downfall of Eastern Airlines under the managment of Frank Lorenzo. It is also a story that relates a great deal about the corporate attitudes of the late 1980s and the potential consequences of that attitude.

The only shortcoming of the book is that the story line leaves off with the ejecetion of Frank Lorenzo as the debor in possession of the bankrupt airline and the appointment of a bankrupcy trustee in April of 1990. The airline did continue operation until sometime later in 1990 when the company was finally liquidated. The story stopped too soon.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michael Manning Review of Grounded by Aaron Bernstein, March 27, 2008

By 

MICHAEL MANNING - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grounded: Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines (Hardcover)

While I lived in Dallas, I read Bernstein's book around the same time time that filmmaker Oliver Stone was in town filming the movie "J.F.K.". I submitted Bernstein's book along with a detailed proposal that included optioning the book rights for a movie with actors Daniel J. Travanti as Lorenzo, Brian Dennehy as Charles Brian and Michael Douglas as Trustee Marty Shugrue. Stone responded 5 days later to me through his assistant Kristina Hare that while this was a meaty subject, the political bent of the book ran counter to his convictions. I found this response puzzling. The book details how Lorenzo, a brilliant financial manipulator, rose from Queens, New York to the heights of owning the world's largest commercial airline empire second only to Russia's Aeroflot. This book is clearly a portrayal of how Lorenzo's get tough tactics with Eastern's notoriously militant IAM led by Charles Bryan from 1980 forward led to a war with Texas Air Management. Lorenzo ended up dismantling the very asset he bought by striking blows against labor in a bitter showdown. Eastern under CEO Frank Borman had 43,000 employees. By the time the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York ousted Lorenzo as "incompetent to reorganize Eastern's estate", only 18,500 employees remained and over $700 million of assets were either sold or dubiously transferred at little or no cost to Texas Air's Continental Airlines. So, Oliver Stone's rationale is quite strange. He is pro-union and this book details how Lorenzo started an unnecessary war with Eastern's unions rather than allow a professional manager to run the airline. Bernstein had unprecedented access to Frank Lorenzo and former managers of Texas Air as he delivers a step by step cautionary tale of how a well educated albeit, a brutal minded executive became his own worst enemy. It is a well paced and well written book that should become required reading for any business school management class.