w:
e have every reason at Piedmont to
remember 1986 with fondness. It was more
than simply a good year, another year in a
growing string of good years for us and our
stockholders. It was an exciting year filled with
warm remembrances.
For the first time ever. Piedmont became the
launch order customer for a new Jet aircraft
when we bought a fleet of 25 Boeing 737-400s.
We became just the sixth U.S. airline in history
to enplane two million passengers in a single
month. For the first time. Piedmont flew more
than 100,000 passengers on a single day. We
merged the fine men and women and the fleet
of Empire Airlines into the Piedmont system,
and achieved this without breaking our stride.
And, of course, we positioned Piedmont to be
come an operator of widebodyjets and, almost
simultaneously, we asked for authority to fly
between Charlotte and London.
We saw the fruition of past efforts. Tbday
we have, for example, one of our industry's
most successful and popular frequent flyer pro
grams serving literally hundreds of thousands of
travelers, most of them loyal Piedmont cus
tomers. We became the third largest carrier
in terms of service to New York City when we
began serving Kennedy Airport, along with our
growing presence at both LaGuardia and New
ark. And we opened attractive new reservations
offices at Orlando and Utica-Rome. We became
the primary provider of intrastate air service
in the nation's fastest growing state, Florida,
through The Piedmont Shuttle.
We committed to major expansions of all our
hubs—Charlotte. Baltimore/Washington, Day
ton and Syracuse—os well as a new mainte
nance facility at Charlotte.
We also identified a disturbing trend, one we
must not ignore. Piedmont no longer stands
relatively alone as a successful exponent of a
deregulated air transportation industry. The
facts are that a growing number of our largest
competitors either prospered, m.erged their re
sources, or did both. Moreover, all four of our
nation's largest and most successful airlines
have started major expansions in the heart of
the Piedmont system.
Tbday there is no belter quality airline in the
skies than Piedmont. There are no belter airline
employees in the industry than Piedmont's. This
is not idle talk. Only Piedmont and its people
took a hard look at our industry's deteriorating
on-time performance record and opted to help
itself rather than keep pressuring only our
government for relief. Because of that effort, we
have demonstrated the ability to run the best
schedule performance of the industry to all the
world.
I believe our greatest challenges and greatest
successes are still ahead of us. We have every
reason to look back upon 1986 with pride, and
to look ahead to 1987 with confidence in our
selves and one another. Jb each and every
Piedmont employee I wish personally, and on
behalf of your Officers and your Board of Direc
tors. a Joyous holiday season and a happy 1987.
William R. Howard •
Chairman. President & Chief Executive Officer
volume 37, number 11
r
December 1986
Maintenance puts 2 B737s in our stocking
Christmas packages don’t always come with
ribbons and bows. Sometimes they come in sheet
metal and seat fabric, taking off and landing
around our 87 airports and quietly adding to the
company's bottom line.
Tkke, for example, the Christmas “present”
being given to Piedmont by our maintenance and
engineering department. Announced in time to
help foster the holiday spirit, it’s a new mainte
nance program which, in effect, will give the
company three 737s over the next 18 months.
That’s three 737s worth at least $20 million
each —quite a present to put under Piedmont’s
Christmas tree.
Designed by a nine-member Maintenance
Programming Committee, the new program will
turn the maintenance of our Boeing 737-200s
and 737-300s into a phased operation that dra
matically improves aircraft utilization without
reducing the maintenance performed. By phas
ing the same total amount of maintenance at
regularly scheduled intervals, rather than provid
ing it in a single block of down-time, an aircraft's
operational hours are significantly increased —
enough so that entire “aircraft” can be added
to the fleet in terms of added flight time to our
schedule.
Tom Schick, vice president-maintenance and
engineering, said the program was born from a
single idea: to more efficiently provide the same
amount of quality maintenance on our aircraft in
order to enhance the company’s growth.
"Our challenge was to see if we could repack
age our maintenance to achieve this goal,"
Schick said. "So we formed a committee that
developed a program whose efficiency will pro
vide less ground time out of the schedule and
more seats in the air. It took creative thinking
and solid maintenance and engineering skills—
skills that we’ll rely heavily upon our mechanics
and support groups to perform."
Members of the committee include A1 Beamon,
manager-maintenance control (chairman); Don
Erickson, industrial engineer: Homer Gordon,
manager-maintenance planning: Charles King,
manager-line maintenance (GSO); George Liven-
good, manager-material planning: Joe Moore,
manager-base maintenance (INT): Tommy Red
man, supervisor-quality assurance; Bill Sebas
tian, manager-line avionics (GSO); and Rick
Veronen, structures engineer.
Beamon said the program repackages C-checks
into six segments and heavy maintenance into
several segments done at different limes. Each
segment is accomplished overnight, when the
aircraft is not needed for Hying. Each morning
following the maintenance segment, the aircraft
is returned to operations for scheduled llights.
"When you consider that the average C-check
continued page 4
1
Howard
Howard named Chairman,
McGee elected Exec. V.R
McGee
William R. Howard was elected
to the newly-created position of
Chairman of the Board, Presi
dent and Chief Executive Officer
at a meeting of the Piedmont
Aviation. Inc., Board of Directors
in Winston-Salem on Decem
ber 3. At the same time, William
G. McGee was elected Executive
Vice President.
Howard, who joined Piedmont
in 1978, had been President and
Chief Executive Officer since
1983. McGee, who joined Pied
mont in 1947, was Senior Vice
President-Marketing.
Howard has been widely rec
ognized as the architect of Pied
mont's extremely successful
strategies in the years following
deregulation. Under his leader
ship, Piedmont has created
major air service hubs at Char
lotte, Baltimore/Washington,
and Dayton and the innovative
Piedmont Shuttle serving intra
state routes in Florida. Piedmont
has also acquired three other
airlines, merging Empire into
the Piedmont system earlier this
year, and continuing to operate
Henson Aviation and Jetstream
International Airways as sepa
rate carriers.
Under McGee’s leadership, the
Piedmont Marketing Depart
ment has instituted one of the
industry's most successful fre
quent flyer programs, an innova
tive approach to pricing each
seat on every flight to maximize
revenues, and most recently has
chaired the highly-sueeessful
On-Time Performance
Committee.
McGee was elected Senior Vice
President-Marketing in 1979. He
is a member of the Piedmont
Board of Directors and the Hen
son Board of Directors,
continued on page 5