They thought it was quite funny, so much so that they couldn’t help talking about it on the ground. No names were mentioned, but the story made the rounds from the stewardesses’ lounge to a cocktail party to the commanding general of the Berlin Brigade, and eventually to the Berliner Zeitung, a local paper. Everyone laughed.
Everyone except Walt Mullikin, who was the chief pilot at the Berlin base and whose job it was to manage the weirdos. This caper exceeded weirdness. Pan Am was being made to look bad in the German press. Messages began landing like incoming mortar shells from Pan Am headquarters in New York.
What are those clowns doing over there? Find out who let a stewardess fly our airplane. Fire his ass.
Mullikin scanned his pilot roster. Who could it be? How many amorous, adolescent captains did he have who would do something so irresponsible and childish?
Well, he had to admit, there were a few. . .
The trail of guilt quickly led to Ed Shaffer. Both the first officer and the flight engineer were asked for their own statements. Mullikin explained their options: Their jobs were on the line. If they were found to be lying . . .
So they told the story the way it happened. Each received a suspension. Ed Shaffer lost his job, though he was reinstated after a couple of years.
In the Berlin base there were no strangers. Every airman was a known quantity. In such a tightly knit flying community, where each pilot knew the foibles of every other pilot, captains tended to treat copilots more as equals. The culture of the ocean-flying Skygods had never taken root in the Berlin base.
But Captain Art Gilson was an exception. He was a short, shrill-voiced man who believed every copilot in Pan Am was trying to get him. And after they had gotten to know him, most were.
The crew-scheduling department in Berlin allowed copilots to bid not to fly with captains with whom they had personality conflicts. Several went on record requesting not to fly with Captain Gilson. When the no-Gilson list had grown to thirty-two copilots, the chief pilot summoned Gilson to his office. “It’s easier to retrain you, Art, than to retrain thirty-two copilots. Please try to get along.”
When copilots were bored or feeling mean, they would push Captain Gilson’s buttons, just to see if they could make him crazy. It was easy.
Gilson stood only five feet four, a statistic that many believed accounted for his contrariness. Any reference to Art’s height would send him into a Napoleonic snit. They would do things like place a Berlin telephone directory—four inches thick—in Art’s seat before he came in the cockpit. That always got Gilson going, no matter how many times he had seen it.
Sometimes, just for amusement, they would simply suggest that Art—a Skygod—might be screwing up.
“Art, aren’t you supposed to be heading zero-four-zero degrees?” said Jim Wood one day. He and Gilson were flying toward Berlin in the southern air corridor.
“I am heading zero-four-zero.”
“Well, not exactly,” said Wood, squinting at the compass on his own instrument panel. “I show you heading about, oh, zero-five-five.”
Gilson reddened. He peered at his compass. “I am not. I am heading zero-four-zero, just as we were assigned.”
“Okay, have it your way,” said Wood. And then, after a minute, “But you’re still off heading.”
Gilson raised himself in his seat. “Listen, mister, I don’t need you to tell me how to fly this airplane.” His voice rose in a crescendo that could be heard in the forward cabin. “I know when I’m off heading. I happen to be the captain of this aircraft, and I won’t have you telling me—”
“Okay, Art, okay. It’s no big deal,” said Wood. Another minute would pass. “Just a lousy fifteen degrees or so. . . I guess it doesn’t matter much. . .”
Gilson’s face would turn purple. He would sputter and simmer, and that, of course, was the intended effect. For some reason, it never occurred to him that was why they did it.
After a while pushing Gilson’s crazy buttons became boring for the Berliners. It was too easy. And then one day they discovered another irresistible aspect of Gilson’s personality: Art Gilson was a man who abhorred crotch shots.
It was Beaver Man who received the credit for pushing Gilson over the edge. Beaver Man was a phantom distributor of anatomical photography. He was particularly fond of the centerfolds from the raunchiest men’s magazines, which he liked to hide in the cockpits. No one knew Beaver Man’s true identity, though it was generally assumed that he was a copilot. It was also suspected, because of the sheer volume of his work, that Beaver Man had several accomplices.
In the center of each pilot’s control yoke was a “hubcap”—a plastic cover with the Boeing logo stamped on it. The yoke hubcaps were Beaver Man’s favorite hiding place. He left cutouts—glossy, up-close, wide-open gynecological photos—beneath the covers. Eventually he managed to insert a tiny, neatly tailored cutout beneath every yoke cover in the Berlin-based fleet of 727s. He even rotated them on a frequent basis so that the pilots wouldn’t get bored with the same old crotch shot day after day.
The first time Art Gilson uncovered one of Beaver Man’s photos, he went crazy. He yanked the offending picture out of its hiding place. “Filthy,” he said. “Disgusting. I can’t believe we have such dirty-minded people working for this airline.”
One day a crotch shot appeared in Art’s crew mailbox. The essential subject of the glossy photo could be viewed through the slot in the mailbox door, like a gynecological peep show.
Gilson flew into a tantrum. “Animals!” he screamed. He ripped the photo to shreds. “Filthy depraved animals!”
The next time it happened, Gilson marched upstairs to the chief pilot’s office and threw the photo on the desk. He wanted the chief to see for himself the depths to which his pilots had sunk. The chief pilot studied the picture. Yes, he had to agree, it certainly was a tasteless picture. But maybe Art ought to lighten up a bit. He shouldn’t take it so seriously.
It went on. More crotch shots appeared. Each time Gilson had another tantrum. Art Gilson was becoming a disturbed man. He was a sputtering volcano about to erupt.
One day it finally happened. Art walked into the crew room and, as usual, stooped to inspect the slot of his mailbox There it was . . . another one. . . a glossy, wet, brilliantly hued crotch shot. . . laminated to the inside of his mailbox door. . . gazing out at him in living color.
Art went crazy. He ripped the door from its hinges. He whirled like a dervish through the Cuckoo’s Nest, babbling incoherently, waving the mailbox door and the affixed crotch shot at all the astonished pilots. He charged upstairs to the chief pilot’s office. “Look what they’ve done,” he screamed. “Look what those crazy bastards have done.”
They never saw Art again in the Cuckoo’s Nest. They heard that he had agreed to accept an early retirement.
There were a few regrets. “We’re going to miss Art,” said Jim Wood. “Who are we going to pick on now?”
No one knew for sure how the chicken got in Al Bond’s locker. But there it was one day, when Chicken Man came to the crew lounge and opened his locker.
The chicken had been there for some time, a couple of days, judging by the smell and the shower of feathers and chicken droppings when the bird exploded from the locker.
Chicken Man made a halfhearted attempt to capture the escaped fowl, then said to hell with it. So the pilots adopted the chicken. It roosted in the Cuckoo’s Nest, flapping from locker to locker, leaving droppings on briefcases and uniform caps, filling the air with a barnyard smell.
One day the chief pilot came down to the Cuckoo’s Nest. He sniffed the air and looked at the fresh droppings on the radiator. “Get rid of the goddamn chicken,” he said.
They did. Later, they talked about how the Berlin base was so special. They had the only crew room in all of Pan Am with its own chicken.
Chapter Seventeen
The Cold War Gladiator
Don’t trust him, son. Look at his eyes. He’s got eyes like a sn
ake.
MOTHER OF NAJEEB HALABY on first meeting General William T. Seawell
General William T. Seawell, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Pan American World Airways, was a casting director’s dream. Tall, blue-eyed, with silver wavy hair, he looked every inch the Supreme Skygod, master of the Imperial Airline. Seawell looked so good that the Rolex Company even persuaded him to appear in its advertising, the general steely-eyed and exuding authority, gold Rolex prominently affixed to his wrist, West Point ring on the third finger of his right hand.
The Pan Am pilots weren’t so sure about Seawell. They had liked his predecessor, good ol’ Jeeb. Maybe Jeeb Halaby hadn’t worked out as CEO. Maybe, they thought, he just inherited too big a mess to clean up in the short time he was aboard. But at least Halaby had been a pilot—one of them, who spoke their language. Halaby used to come around the pilot lounges, ride the cockpits, swap flying stories with the troops.
Jeeb was a good guy. In fact, his whole problem might have been that he was too good a guy. Some people suspected that Jeeb Halaby, in his inner core, might have been a little too soft for the job.
No one had ever accused Bill Seawell of softness. There was, in fact, a meanness to Seawell that revealed itself in his dealings with underlings. Seawell was charming, courteous, ingratiating—to those from whom he needed something. To those beneath him—the enlisted and lower-ranking subspecies—he was cold, even cruel. The nastiness of his temper became a thing of awe on the forty-sixth floor, peeling paint from the walls and causing battle-toughened secretaries to weep.
Seawell’s tantrums came as a shock to staffers accustomed to the autocratic courtliness of Juan Trippe, the cordial coldness of Harold Gray, and the easy affability of Jeeb Halaby. It was like going to sleep with Snow White and waking up with Godzilla.
Out on the line, the pilots wondered about Seawell. They figured they ought to like him. After all, he was a pilot, and that should have been good. But Seawell came from SAC—the Strategic Air Command—where he had been a goddamn general. And that was bad.
SAC was the Devil’s Island of the Air Force. It was invariably the last choice of every newly graduated Air Force pilot, his worst dream come true. SAC was commanded by Cold War gladiators, generals whose eyes glinted when they spoke of things like megatons and throw weight and preemptive strikes. It was the language of Armageddon. SAC had a tradition unlike any other branch of the service. Generals berated colonels who beat up on light colonels and majors, who in turn made life a living hell for captains and lieutenants. No one knew why. That was just the way it had always been.
General Seawell was a SAC product. He had other credentials—the Harvard M.B.A., and the experience at American Airlines and Rolls-Royce. He had wrapped up his Air Force career as commandant of the Air Force Academy. But beneath all the veneer, Bill Seawell would forever remain what he was: a general of the Strategic Air Command. A Cold War gladiator.
A story was making the rounds of the crew rooms. One night at Kennedy Airport, Seawell worked himself into a seething rage. He was pacing the carpeted floor of the Clipper Club like a caged lion. Watching him from a discreet distance were his wife—known to Pan Am executives as Mrs. Chairman—and the airline’s president, Dan Colussy.
They were flying to London that evening. Rather, they were supposed to fly to London, but the Pan Am 747, Clipper Westwind, had a mechanical problem. For nearly two hours, mechanics had been trooping on and off the airplane, climbing up and down the spiral staircase to the cockpits shaking their heads, and calling on their walkie-talkies to maintenance headquarters.
Seawell took one more glance at his gold Rolex and frowned. Enough was enough. He was taking no more of this crap. The general swiveled and marched out of the lounge and down the corridor, his heels hammering like drumbeats on the marble floor.
In the cockpit of the 747, the captain tossed his spectacles down on the opened maintenance log. “We oughta be halfway across the Atlantic by now,” he said to the flight engineer. “How much longer, do you think?”
“No idea,” said the engineer, a grizzled old-timer with a balding pate. “With a hydraulic system leak, you never know.” The 747’s hydraulic systems were like an arterial system. They routed hydraulic pressure to the aircraft’s vital components—flight controls, landing gear, flaps, brakes.
In the next instant, the cockpit door burst open. Standing there in the aft cockpit, eyes burning like embers, was the airline’s chief executive officer. “Why isn’t this goddamn airplane moving?” General Seawell demanded.
The three airmen stared at the general as if he were a visitor from Uranus.
“I beg your pardon?” said the captain.
“We’ve been here long enough,” said Seawell. “Move this airplane.”
“We have a leak in the number one hydraulic system,” explained the captain. “We can’t move until it’s been isolated and repaired.”
“We paid millions of dollars for backup systems for these airplanes,” said the general. “Use them.”
The captain was six months from retirement. He had been flying Pan Am airplanes for thirty-one years, most of that time in command, which made him a possessor of authentic Skygod credentials.
“The airplane will depart,” declared the captain, “when I am satisfied that it is airworthy. Not before.”
“I’m the chief executive officer of this airline,” said the general. “I’m ordering you to get this goddamn airplane out of here.”
“I’m the captain of this aircraft,” snapped the captain. “We’ll move when I’m good and ready. And you’re interfering with the operation of this crew, sir. I’ll ask you to leave my cockpit.”
They locked gazes. It was a standoff of Skygods—Master of Ocean Flying Boats versus Imperial Airline chief executive.
One hour and forty-four minutes later—when the repair to the number one hydraulic system had been completed to his satisfaction—the captain ordered the doors closed and the external connections removed from the jetliner. Without further incident, Clipper Westwind departed on her journey to London.
When the board of directors requested Najeeb Halaby’s resignation and turned the chairmanship over to William Seawell, they had given Seawell a mandate to clean house at Pan Am. So the general started cleaning. And slashing. His mission, as he saw it, was to save Pan Am by shrinking it.
The airline was bloated, both in staffing levels and in route structure. Pan Am had stations staffed with managers, agents, mechanics, and public relations people—with only one flight a day transiting their station. “Pan Am didn’t have just stations,” reported the Wall Street Journal. “It had embassies.”
Accounting at Pan Am was a joke. No one could say at any given time whether a particular segment of the airline was making or losing money. “They simply had no statistics,” said a business reporter. “No analysis and no control. They were losing bushels of money, but didn’t know where. It was like a company out of the thirties—they simply loaded all the passengers they could, added up the bills at the end of the month, and looked at the total to see where they had come out.”
Another joke was the management structure. Pan Am had almost as many vice presidents as it had secretaries. Anyone could be a staff vice president. “Being a vice president at Pan Am was like being a Kentucky colonel,” said an airline consultant. It was a token handed out, usually in lieu of a raise, for an up-and-coming manager to stick on his resume. “There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it,” said Dan Colussy, the airline president appointed by Seawell. “A guy would come in and ask to be a VP because Joe Blow down the hall was a VP. It just proliferated.”
And so the heads rolled. Under Seawell the employee count shrank from 42,000 to 27,000. The platoons of vice presidents went back to being what they were—middle managers. The rank of staff vice president was eliminated completely.
The route system shrank. Pan Am dropped service to Paris, Vienna, and Moscow and ended flights between Seattle, Port
land, and Honolulu. It shut down operations in Boston and closed the recently opened pilot base there as well as the new crew base in Hong Kong. Closing the bases, said the official bulletin, would save $15 million at each location.
Which was also a joke. In the hoopla of opening each base two years before, the company had proclaimed that it would save $15 million. “Imagine the money we’re saving,” said Joe Diedrich, a Berlin pilot. “Between opening and closing the bases, we’re saving thirty mil on each one. Now that’s management.”
It sounded like a fairy tale when the story broke in the May 13 Wall Street Journal:
NEW YORK—Pan American World Airways is saved. Its existence now seems assured for many years, and it may even turn a profit this year—thanks to some special circumstances.
And the circumstances were pretty special. In Pan Am’s darkest hour, a fairy godfather had come to the rescue. It happened like this.
In 1974, following the Yom Kippur War and the resultant oil price hikes by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the cost of jet fuel went through the ceiling. Only about 6 percent of Pan American’s total jet fuel was purchased from domestic sources. The rest was bought overseas, at OPEC-controlled prices. Pan Am’s fuel bill abruptly doubled.
Because of the hugeness of the airline’s losses that year, Seawell applied to the Civil Aeronautics Board for temporary subsidy. It was hoped that the Nixon administration, which had persuaded Congress to guarantee loans to Lockheed when the aircraft manufacturer had been about to go under, would do as much for another American institution, the financially troubled Pan American.
Pan American? The financially troubled Pan American? By now the mention of Pan Am caused a narrowing of the eyes and furrowing of foreheads in the Nixon White House. It was a bitter irony that the Nixon Republicans turned out to be no more favorably disposed to Pan Am than the Johnson Democrats had been. Pan Am had gotten short shrift in the Nixon international route handouts, been stonewalled by Nixon’s Justice Department in the merger effort with TWA, and now was being ignored in its request for subsidy.
Skygods: The Fall of Pan Am Page 17
