Toonerville Triumph

Jack Frye left the presidency of TWA amid predictions that it would become a "Toonerville airline." It refused to buy new equipment, canceled the order for 18 Constellations which expansive Jack Frye wanted. Howard Hughes, who controls TWA, thought that what the airline needed was efficient economic operation of the planes it had. To get it, he put La Motte T. Cohu in as TWA president.

Tough, canny Mr. Cohu, World War I flyer and ex-board chairman of Northrop Aircraft Inc., lost no time in swinging his new broom--and his ax. He spent so much time flying from one TWA office to another that a TWA underling quipped: "The loneliest place in the company is the president's office in Kansas City."

But other TWAsters found nothing humorous in his trips. Wherever Cohu stopped, employees usually got fired. Cohu merged TWA's four regional headquarters into one office and trimmed the airline's swollen staff of 15,000 by 13%. As costs went down and traffic rose, TWA's deficit was turned into a profit of $202,000 in this year's second quarter.

The profit rose to $884,000 in the third quarter, promising a gross business of $78,000,000 in 1947 (against $57,000,000 last year). That started Cohu thinking about new planes. Last week, about ten months after Frye left, TWA ordered twelve new Connies. The line's once bad credit had improved enough so that some 14 banks put up the $15,000,000 to pay for them. TWA had not yet flown through all the rough weather. But the air was smoother than it had been for years.

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