Eastern Airlines was growing as more individuals and corporations found the speed and convenience of air travel for vacations and business. The commercial side of business travel grew the fastest, as salesmen, executives and meeting planners could set up or attend meetings in a much shorter time. Salesmen could now expand their travel to include more cities and still get home for the weekend. The Hartford office expanded to cover the Northern area of Connecticut and all of Western Massachusetts. This area included about one hundred travel agents and hundreds of commercial accounts.
It was a daunting task to cover all this territory. I spent many weeks making an inventory of all the travel agents in the district. Many hours were spent on the phone, calling agents for details on ownership, employees, etc. These were all placed on IBM cards. It was important to make a call pattern so that the travel agents got a personal visit. Fortunately, the A.R.C. (Airline Reporting Corporation), could supply us with ticket sales figures, per agency. This information was also noted on the IBM cards so I knew the highest producers for our area.
On the commercial side, I had to determine what large corporations and manufacturers were in my sales area. This was very important as airlines were trying to gain control of business travel by offering credit through their use of a credit card issued by a specific airline. The card was called an ATP Account or "Air Travel Plan" account. Although the card was good for charging travel on any airline, it gave the issuing airline the ability to know on which airline the passenger was purchasing tickets, and where they were traveling. This was very important information as now the District Sales Representative whose airline had the ATP account knew how much travel was being done and what airline was being used.
In order to obtain an ATP account a company or other organization had to place a deposit with the issuing airline, in the amount of $425.00. For a company that was doing a lot of travel, they could have an individual card issued for all their executive staff and traveling sales people, giving them control over their travel expenses, such as first class or coach travel. Fortunately I was very good at sales and often had the highest ATP sales of all the District offices.
Developing a good rapport with the large travel agencies was very important as a travel agent was often able to direct their client's air travel to any airline serving their client's destination. Some of the large agents would direct their staff to steer their clients to a certain airline. It was about that time that group travel started. A good sales representative began calling on large corporations and talking to employee groups and organizations about organizing a group of fellow employees or organization members to travel to Florida, or other popular destinations for their vacations. We could offer a free ticket to the organizer if they reached a group of fifteen people or more. (Giving a free ticket to anybody or even to a group of fifteen people had to be approved by the C.A.B.)
The Civil Aviation Board controlled all aviation. Airline routes were awarded by the C.A.B., the routes were based on public need, and were subsidized by the government for carrying the mail. All routes were airmail routes and flight numbers were based on those routes. The first digit in the flight number indicated if the aircraft was traveling from North to South, or from South to North, from East to West, or from West to East. The second digit indicated the direction in which the aircraft was traveling. For instance, Eastern Airlines flight 602 was airmail route #6 and 02 indicated it was a northbound flight. Flight 603 would be the same airmail route only southbound.
The C.A.B. controlled all air fares. Airlines could not charge just any fare they wanted, nor could they pay any commission they wanted. It all had to be approved by the CAB. Unfortunately, many airlines bent the rules or ignored them completely. The C.A.B. would assess heavy fines if they were caught, but later on it got completely out of control which led to the Dublin Accords, which I will mention later. During President Carter's administration airlines were deregulated, however all regulation pertaining to safety, maintenance, pilot training, etc. still remains in force today through the F.A.A. (The Federal Aviation Administration).
Getting back to the Hartford office, because of the size of the sales area, it was almost impossible to give it the coverage it deserved. In consultation with the Regional Office, we decided that we needed an additional salesman. We interviewed a number of applicants and decided on Chris Mayhall, who came to us from our Alabama office. He was a great guy, whom all of us got to admire greatly. We decided that I would cover the Western Massachusetts area, and Chris would cover Northern Connecticut.
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