Although I felt that I would not hear from C.I.G.A. again, after my conversation with Alberto Scialenga, I couldn't help but think about it. I guess you would say that I was somewhat flattered by our conversation. That didn't last long; Tubby Walker, KLM's legal head, called me and asked me to accompany him to Washington, where the Civil Aviation Board was going to hold hearings on relaxing some of the rules regarding the chartering of aircraft. With the increased capacity of the large jet aircraft it was not easy to charter an aircraft to a company or group and expect them to fill over 200 seats. The airlines wanted the C.A.B. to allow "Split Charters", the idea being that the seat capacity affinity could be split between two companies or groups. Each group would still have to have an affinity, but you could charter one half of the aircraft to each one. The legal departments from each airline, and Charter Managers like me were in attendance. All were in favor of the rule change. The C.A.B. agreed and would issue a rule change.
As soon as I got back to New York, I advised all our stations of the change, and asked them to contact all their travel agents in their district with the news. I personally contacted a number of travel agents with whom I had a personal relationship in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Michigan. It was only about a week later that one of my old Connecticut agents called me to ask if he could charter a 747 aircraft on the split charter basis. After checking with Tubby Walker, who said that it was OK to do it, I told the Agent to go ahead. I called George Emory, the Hartford DSM, to set up a meeting with that agent and that I would go with him to take the charter contracts for signature. You will recall that George Emory had taken over my job in Hartford, when I went to Detroit.
At the travel agency, I asked to be shown the documentation that would guarantee that the two groups, the "John Boyle Society" and the "Polish American Club", were legitimate affinity organizations. The last thing I wanted was to have a C.A.B. investigator check after the fact and find any cheating on their membership. Satisfied that they were legitimate, I had the agent sign the charter contracts. A few weeks later, the charter departed out of Hartford.
It was just a few days later, upon my return to New York, that Fritz Kielman, the V.P. of American Operations, stormed into my office and demanded to know why I had operated a split charter without his permission. I was quite taken back. I had never had to have his permission to do my job, and said so. He said that this charter was the first one to operate under the new rules and that KLM, as a foreign airline, did not want to be the first to do so. I told him that I had no idea that this was his wish. As far as I knew, KLM had every right to perform a charter once it was approved by the America Civil Aviation Board. He said that it was a matter of courtesy to the American flag carriers that they are the first to fly under the new rules. (Although I didn't say so, I felt pretty good that I was able to be the first.) I had cleared it all through Tubby Walkers office and had his OK, so I guess Tubby didn't know either.
Just a note, Fritz Kielman was a Dutchman through and through. He was a big game hunter and often hunted with Prince Bernhard, husband of the Dutch Queen. As many times as I flew across to Holland in First Class on the same flights as Fritz Kielman, he never invited me to sit with him. That's very much European. I had already observed in Amsterdam, at the home office, that if a small group of employees were waiting for an elevator, they would get into the elevator by rank. If the President was there, he would board first. The rest, boarded according to their management level in the company. That's just the way it was.
It had been almost two months since I spoke with Alberto Scialenga, from C.I.G.A. and I assumed that he no longer had any interest in pursuing what we had discussed during our dinner. Therefore, it came as quite a surprise when he called and asked that we have dinner again. He had to return to Rome after our last dinner together and was just now getting back to New York.
I had already made arrangements to fly down to Aruba for the weekend. The manager of the Aruba Caribbean Hotel had invited me. This was one of my favorite hotels in the Dutch Antilles. I was flying down on Thursday and would not be back until Monday. Alberto agreed that we should meet on Monday evening after my return, to New York.
I had a great time in Aruba. The beach at the hotel was beautiful; it was called Miami Beach, but the similarity stopped there. The sand was snow white and the water as clear as the deep blue sky. The water was very salty as the Island got its drinking water from a desalinization plant. The salt was then returned to the sea, which led to very high buoyancy; it made swimming easy. The beach was rimmed with native Divi Divi trees, a unique tree to the ABC Islands, where the tree top lays horizontal to the ground in the direction of the prevailing winds. The beach was dotted with multi colored umbrellas to provided shade and "Beach Boys" stood by, ready to bring you a cooling drink or an extra towel. It was hard to leave all that beauty and get back to the reality in New York. Now that I was alone in New York, I tried to get away to Florida or the Dutch Islands as much as possible. Curacao Island was another Dutch favorite; I remember even today, the great time we had when I took the Kathy, Karen and Kirby there in the 1960's.
Dinner with Alberto was quite more than I had anticipated. He wanted to hire me to be President and Director of Marketing for their C.I.G.A. American Division. I would open an office in New York and staff it with reservations agents and sales staff. Later on, we'd open offices in Chicago and the West Coast. Eventually, they planned to expand into South America. The salary he offered was about $20,000 more than I was making at KLM. We talked about office budgets, contracts, expenses, and more. We spent more than four hours together with questions and answers. I left him with the promise that I would give it every consideration. Since he was returning to Italy the next day, he gave me his telephone number in Rome and said that he would be back in about two weeks. He wanted to know what I thought of his proposition. I told him that it certainly was interesting, but I needed time to think it over very carefully, as I would be giving up 13 years seniority with KLM and almost 40 years in aviation, which made me feel that I had a level of job security with KLM. I felt that I had grown up in the industry as it went from 21 seat DC-3's to giant Jets carrying 200 and more passengers.
I had a very sleepless night that night, and many more to follow.
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