New Pilot for T.W.A.

One day last week a tall, powerfully built man stepped out of the board room at T.W.A. headquarters in Kansas City, Mo., peeled off his coat, shouted to a friend, "I feel pretty good now, Swede, let's wrestle." LaMotte Turck Cohu, 51, felt pretty good because he had just been elected president of T.W.A. to replace Jack Frye.

In "Mot" Cohu (rhymes with show-you), T.W.A. had an experienced pilot at the stick. A World War I Navy flyer, Cohu first peddled aviation securities before he moved into the operating end of the industry. In 1930 he started Interstate Airlines, now part of Eastern Air-Lines, moved on to become a director and president of Aviation Corp. in its early, money-losing days. With Jack Northrop, Cohu organized Northrop Aircraft, Inc. in 1939, served as its board chairman and general manager until he resigned a fortnight ago.

T.W.A. Boss Howard Hughes, who got tired of hearing Frye say no, has no yes-man in Cohu. Though a close personal friend of Hughes and a T.W.A. director since 1933, Mot Cohu has decided opinions about how an airline should be run. He intends to cut out what he calls "the fancy gadgets" and overlapping services, steer the company along more conservative lines. He believes that T.W.A. expanded too fast and too far, frequently questioned Frye's enthusiasm for developing overseas routes at the expense of domestic service.

Most airmen guessed that Cohu would not have as free a hand with the airline as Jack Frye had. Hughes had come close to losing control of his line once, and he was smart enough not to take that chance again. By virtue of drastic payroll cuts Hughes had pushed through--and the spring increase in airline traffic--T.W.A. was doing much better than last winter, when it lost $1,000,000 a month. It hopes that this month it may even break even.

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