As flight attendant uniforms began to get briefer and more form fitting, PSA discovered that sex sells, and a large percentage of the male flying public thought they'd died and gone to heaven. If nothing else, PSA will be remembered for its flight attendants and their uniforms. In a San Francisco Chronicle editorial, Scott Newhall dubbed them "the cupcakes of the airlines, the vestal virgins of the air."
Initially, PSA flight attendants wore the traditional two-piece military style business suit used by most other airlines. But around 1962, PSA departed from tradition and introduced the "banana skin." So called not because its color, which was brown, but because of its form-fitting silhouette. The banana skin was, as one flight attendant recalls, "definitely revealing."
Carol Austin, who wore one, describes the "skin": It was very form fitting with a zipper all the way up the front; you really had to peel it on and off. Everything showed. It was definitely ahead of its time because everyone else was in a boxy business-type uniform."
There is a theory about rising hemlines signaling stock market increases. In 1967, PSA stock traded at $49.85 a share, and the following year the flight attendants appeared in miniskirts that climbed an alarming five inches above the knee (orange ruffled pettipants underneath kept things decent when they reached for the overhead racks).
But there was something more to these prototype miniskirts, Austin notes: "Those minis were 100 percent wool, so whenever we got out in the rain, they would shrink right on our bodies." Nails, lipstick, and shoes matched in a fluorescent color called "hula orange" (she's not making this up); heart-shaped hats mysteriously affixed to elaborate bouffant hairdos completed the outfit.
Debbie Hall, who joined PSA in 1974 as a flight attendant, recalls that the miniskirts "definitely encouraged looks and gropes." She, like other PSA flight attendants, figures she averaged about one marriage proposal per week. But she says her worst memory of those days was the number of cigarette burns she sustained on her legs as she walked up and down the aisle.
"We thought we were the bees' knees in those minis," says Hall, "but when we walked into the terminal, people thought we worked at Disneyland. We sure didn't look like flight attendants."
Andrews, the man responsible for introducing mini skirted flight attendants, is unrepentant: "They were damn good-looking girls who were very professional. We didn't hesitate a moment to promote them. Sure it created a lot of talk, but that's fine. It promoted the airline."
But didn't it ever bother these former fighter jocks, the pilots with the right stuff, to captain a pink, smiling plane with stewardesses wearing frilly underwear? "If you love to fly," says former chief pilot Bogle, "you couldn't care less." Besides, he adds with a gleam in his eye, "I thought those skirts should have been two inches higher."
By the latter half of the swinging sixties, PSA was continuing its good-news growth trend, and in 1969 carried 4.4 million satisfied customers. Also, near the close of the decade, the 6-foot-by-12-foot former latrine was replaced with a new 187,000-square-foot headquarters. This edifice cost a tad more than the $3.80 it took to move and rehabilitate the military outhouse: $3.75 million, to be precise.
During this period, Ronald Reagan became one of PSA's most notable frequent fliers, using the airline often during his eight years as governor (his daughter Maureen also worked in PSA's public relations department for a time). Whatever their political stripe, PSA personnel recall Reagan fondly. As Bill Hastings, director of corporate communications, puts it, "He gave up PSA for Air Force One."
The sixties clearly proved that PSA could make the good times-and the profits-roll, but the seventies were to see the ecstasy give way to a certain amount of agony as the airline flew into some heavy operating weather.
In 1970 there were hints of continued prosperity as PSA entered the decade with an all Boeing equipped fleet of one 727-100, sixteen 727-200s and nine 737-200s. Continuing its growth, the smiling airline carried over five million passengers and notched up a 1971 profit of $3.6 million.
But things soured in November 1973, when the airline was stuck for the first time in its history by the Teamsters Union. Approximately six hundred maintenance personnel and seven hundred station personnel kept to the outside of the picket line. Management and supervisors pitched in and the airline continued operations, losing only about 40 percent of the normal schedule. Emotion ran hot, though, and the strike wounded the PSA psyche.
The carrier also made its fair share of strategic goofs. In 1972, with the Civil Aeronautics Board holding firm in its refusal to grant PSA permission to fly interstate routes, Andrews, never at a loss for a good marketing idea, steered his company into an ambitious plan for diversification: the Fly/Drive/Sleep campaign. Because passengers were confined to California, the thinking was, he says, "to give passengers a reason to fly with us, to give them something more, something better than the competition." PSA would provide a total service to passengers: a plane to fly them to their destination, a car to drive once they got there, and a bed to sleep in at night. Each component of the campaign would promote the others.
Most notably, PSA bought the hotel portion of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, along with several other operations up and down the state, including the Islandia in San Diego. Additionally, the airline bought a car rental business and several radio stations.
But Fly/Drive/Sleep was probably ahead of its time, and the campaign quickly fizzled. Fergie Fulmer says it was doomed by commuter behavior, "People go up and back the same day, so it didn't tie in as it should have." For his part, Andrews admits there were two problems, "We should have let the experts run the program instead of trying to do it ourselves, and our timing was bad. Timing killed it." Just as the programs got under way, fuel cost zoomed into the stratosphere. Prices increased tenfold and the crunch was on.
Suddenly PSA, the darling of the industry, the airline that could do no wrong, was encountering turbulence. As consumer affairs director Judy James says, that revelation came as something of a shock. "People were disappointed because for the first time an attempt at doing something unique, which PSA always was good at, failed."
Adding to this tale of woe, the airline took delivery of two Lockeed L-1011 TriStars in 1974. These wide-bodied planes could carry 296 passengers, and were intended to take the load on the airline's busiest route between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Unfortunately, the recessionary economy, combined with government-enforced fuel quotas, resulted in the grounding of these aircraft.
Not only were the L-1011s fuel guzzlers, but their huge capacity proved a hindrance. Frequent flyer Newall, shuttling back and forth as part of his Chronicle duties, observed that it took as much time to load and unload the passengers as it did to actually fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles. "The L-1011 was a fine plane to fly between California and Czechoslovakia, but for this commuter run it was too big."
Simultaneous with this litany of despair, the PUC, PSA's intrastate regulator, began implementing some heavy handed anti-PSA tactics. As CEO Paul Barkley tells it, the PUC, greatly influenced by Sacramento politics, began favoring Air California, which was then flying in bankruptcy. PSA's requests for additional routes, necessary for continued growth, were almost systematically denied. In addition, PSA's requests to enter the major Orange County market-not coincidentally Air Cal's home turf-were blocked repeatedly.
The airline was bleeding badly. By 1975 it was losing $1 million a month, four hundred employees were furloughed, and payroll was met only with the assistance of a loan. Passengers began to gripe when martinis were no longer served with olives.
Meanwhile, the two L-1011s were baking, parked on a patch of Arizona blacktop, as PSA worked feverishly to unload them. Unfortunately, Lockeed was scheduled to deliver three more of these behemoths soon.
Year-end profits for 1975 took a bath as PSA turned in its first loss since the company had gone public in 1963: an after-tax depression of $16.7 million. (By comparison, the previous year's earnings were $1.6 million.) The sun-baked L-1011s were responsible for $7.89 million of that sorry picture.
Early in 1976, J. Floyd Andrews bowed out as CEO. During his twenty-seven year career with PSA, Andrews had earned the accolades of employees, competitors, and even the normally acerbic press. Throughout his long tenure, Andrews, who never lost his fighter pilot bravura, earned several inches of earnest adjectives in local and national newspapers, being variously described as swashbuckling, dapper, flamboyant, opinionated, controversial, and colorful. Ask him about this and he responds with an "ah, shucks" explanation: "Californians are used to color and excitement, and that's what we put into the airline." It was a legacy to be proud of.
Andrews was succeeded that year by William R. Shimp, formerly chief pilot for PSA and now the third CEO in the company's history. His first order of business was to continue the plan to dispose of the subsidiary hotel and broadcasting operations, selling the remaining radio station, and two of the four hotels. The L-1011s continued their sojourn in the Arizona sun, but the company managed to reap earnings of some $3 million by the close of 1976.
Meanwhile, the PUC was by now sitting on fare increases for an average of eighteen months, explains Barkley. This sloth like response time, combined with seemingly daily fuel price hikes (OPEC maneuverings had driven up PSA's fuel costs from $10 million per year to $120 million by mid-decade), drove PSA to the precipice of bankruptcy. Management decided that the airline's only chance for survival lay outside California. It was now essential that PSA get interstate routes.
In 1977, Barkley spearheaded the carrier's successful efforts to lobby Congress for airline deregulation, which became law in December. The deregulation bill was, he says, "a godsend." Without it, PSA would have inevitably rolled belly-up.
In 1978, the Civil Aeronautics Board finally relented and granted PSA approval to serve interstate markets: Oakland to Reno and San Diego to Las Vegas. The Vegas flight featured fares that were a whopping 35 percent lower than the competition's. Also in 1978, with the advent of the industry deregulation, routes and fares suddenly became a free-for-all. New airlines popped up overnight, offering bargain fares with minimalist services.
PSA management saw deregulation as a window of opportunity. Putting on its running shoes, the grinning airline prepared for competition by adding new equipment, new destinations, and new structures on the ground.
To celebrate its newly won growth opportunity, PSA ordered twelve of the new McDonnell Douglas MD Super 80 aircraft, the quietest, most fuel-efficient commercial aircraft then available. And the two sun-baked L-1011s finally taxied off the companies debit sheets, having been subleased to Aero Peru.
In addition to its fleet expansion, PSA was also adding some valuable property on the ground. A 2.5-million reservations center was completed in San Diego, while ground-breaking ceremonies were held on a multimillion-dollar flight training facility next door. And for the first time in a while, it looked as if the grins on the planes might mean it.
Then, on September 25, 1978, tragedy stuck. PSA flight 182 collided in midair with a privately owned Cessna 172, killing 144 people, including 37 PSA employees.
Judy James recalls that day with stunning clarity, "Flight 182 was the unthinkable. I always felt safe on our airline; it couldn't happen to us. It was particularly difficult because of the number of PSA employees-our friends-who were on board."
Fergie Fulmer still seethes about the circumstances of the accident. "My career, when I retired, was going to be to get the little airplanes out of the big airplanes' airports. It was totally unnecessary."
PSA ended the turbulent seventies on a positive note with 1979 as its first full year as an interstate carrier, carrying a record 8.6 million passengers. You could now catch PSA's smile to fifteen cities in four Western states. Even the accountants were grinning as the airline chalked up a $23-million profit, making that year its best ever.
Better to say, though, that reality had joined frivolity at the West's favorite airline. And that the effervescent energy of the sixties would not be seen again. New mideast turmoil sent aviation fuel costs soaring again, and that in turn stiffened PSA's fare structure. By years end, the Los Angeles to San Francisco fare had inched up to $46, a hint of the economic austerity to come.
The eighties were to be a tumultuous decade for PSA, with several "firsts," both happy and unhappy, depending on one's viewpoint.
In spring 1980, PSA became an international carrier, initiating service to Mexico from Los Angeles. And in keeping with this latest expansion, PSA took delivery of its first MD or Super 80 airplane, touted as the quiet fuel miser.
But the good news came to a screeching halt in September when PSA's pilots stuck the airline. For fifty-two days service was completely stopped for the first time in its history.
Not surprisingly, the strike slammed year-end passenger volumes, with a drop of 2 million from 1979's 8.6 million passengers. Earnings also took it on the chin, knocked down to $12.6 million compared to $23 million the previous year.
Although PSA was down, it wasn't out. The following year, twelve more Super 80's joined the fleet; increased fuel efficiencies meant a savings of some $1.7 million. And a mammoth training facility, begun in 1979 was formally opened, featuring the nation's first Super 80 simulator.
Once again, however, world events played havoc with PSA's get-well regimen as the nation plunged into a deep recession. And when President Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers, the personnel shortage meant an FAA-ordered flight reduction.
"We got debeaked," Barkley explains. "We had a lot of flights at 5:00 p.m. Because of the strike, the FAA limited the number of flights and made us spread our flights over the entire day." For PSA's particular business, the commuter run up and down the coast, this was disastrous.
The strike-induced FAA limitations also focused the attention of the big trunk carriers, United and American, on a very interesting fact: resources such as runways, slots, gates, were now limited. They began adopting what Barkley calls "the crowding-out theory": flying old aircraft while buying new equipment and expanding massively, gobbling up gates at airports, and saturating markets even where business was minimal. The new game in town was: I don't want it and I don't need it, but I'll take it before anybody else gets it.
So when the FAA began apportioning flight slots, its basic criterion was what the airline was flying before the strike. The result was, to nobody's surprise, the big got bigger. And PSA was right in the middle of it, fighting for its own slots-especially peak-period slots-and, as Barkley says, enjoying modest success.
PSA's recovery from the strike was slower than anticipated; the airline carried just 6 million passengers in 1981.
The national recessionary misery continued the following year. Nevertheless, industry gurus saw light at the end of the tunnel, and PSA reached an agreement in principle with bankrupt Braniff Airways to lease and purchase its assets, forming a new hub at Dallas/Ft. Worth.
But in 1983 the Braniff deal was aborted when the bankruptcy judge wouldn't recognize Braniff's slots as assets. With no slots and no gates, and therefore nowhere to fly into at Dallas/Ft.Worth, PSA was obliged to stand down.
