Customer Reviews

Poor Sailors' Airline: The Story of Kenny Friedkin's Pacific Southwest Airlines

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

PSA was the model for today's successful Southwest Airlines. In fact, as this book shows, the founders of SWA carefully studied PSA with the latter carrier even providing training manuals to the upstart Texas intrastate.

Gary Kissel, who worked at PSA in its later years in public relations, gives the reader a very in-depth look into the carrier's history. Some might say too in-depth. Yet, in the final analysis, PSA deserves a detailed history.

The California corridor has always been one of aviation's most important routes, and PSA bridged it during its great boom years.

I knocked it down a star because the book has some editing glitches. Even some of the maps have gaps for missing dates. Nevertheless, the excellent quality of the papers, binding, maps and photographs that typify a Paladwr Press book, outweigh such minor and incidental problems.

My favorite PSA story is missing from the book. (Maybe it's apocryphal.) When I worked at SFO (across the lobby of the old Central Terminal from the PSA counter) legend had it that the famous Carol Doda of S.F.'s Condor Club attempted to be the first airline passenger to go topless on a PSA flight. But she was busted before boarding.

So to speak.