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USAirman
By Grover Heiman
Edwin Colodny '48 never
flew on a commercial plane until
he was twenty-eight years old.
Now he's regarded as one of the
best CEOs in the airline
business.
As a yo ungster, Edwin 1. Colod ny
delivered groceries. W he n he was in
high school, he wai ted on tables at
Adirondacks resorts during sum me r
vacations. And he was a short-o rder
coo k whil e a t Harvard Law School. In
every one of those jobs, he learned th at
customers "app reciate some fo rm of
attent iveness." As chairman, president,
and ch ief ex ecutive officer of
U SAir, he's still convinced that persona
l atte ntion is important.
" Manageme nt mu st be visi ble," he
says , "and that means yo u can no t sit in
a n office andjust shuffle pap er s
around . You have to be ou t dealing
with yo ur personnel and yo ur cus to mers
and kn ow wha t's going on ."
Co lod ny is determined that USAir
will pla y second fiddl e to no ot he r
a irline - and yet Co lodny himself
mi ght hav e wound up pla yin g second
fiddl e in a sympho ny orchestra if he
had not made a sharp tu rn in h is ca reer
plans while he was still in college.
A studen t of the violin since the age
of eight, Colodny decid ed agains t a
ca reer in music after th ree years a t th e
Ea stman Sch ool of Music a t th e
U n ive rsity of R ochester. " It became
appare nt to me ," he says, "that I was
not going to be a violin virtuoso , but
th at if I just wan ted to be one of th e
pack , I could mak e a livin g . So I
took my major in govern me nt at
Rochester" and applied to H arvard
Law :School. "
';
' Colodny maintains close tieswith his alma
mater. A University Trustee, he is a memberof the
Trustees' committeecharged with the selection of a
successor to President Sproull, who has announced
his approaching retirement onfu ne 30, 1984.
14
H arvard accepted him and Colodny
put his violin away. H e has no t tu cked
th e instrument under his ch in in many
years, altho u gh he docs listen to a great
deal of music.
He listens m ost, howev er , to jet
airl iners, emp loye es, custome rs- and
th e cash register. While so me of his
competitors fight for surviva l, USAir is
more th an holding its ow n .
Over the yea rs, U SA ir has posted
gcowth rat es th at exceed th e industry
a verage . T oday it ranks seven th
among domestic sche duled airl ines in
passenger s carried-an estimated fourteen
million in 1982 - and tenth in th e
world . Sales in 1981 amounted to
$1.25 billion , and profits reached
$58.5 million, giving USAir the best
ope rat ing margin among domesti c air
carriers.
USAir began in th e 1930 s as All
American Avi ati on Company . It ca rried
no passen ger s a t first. Instead , th e
airline flew air mail on a 1,040-mile
route over tre ache ro us mountains in
Pennsylvani a and West Virginia .
The region lacked ade q uate airports,
an d to reach isolated communities
in th e hollows, the co mpany
dev elop ed a u nique a ir-to-g ro u nd
method for pick ing up th e outgoing
mail .
Flyin g a St inso n sin gle-eng ine
monoplane, the All American pil ot
dropped a m ail-fill ed pouch to a local
postmaster. Then he let out a cable
with a hook on the end . H e flew low
over th e pickup point, wh ere the
postm aster had hung th e ou tgoing ma il
po uch on a seco nd ca ble, strung between
two poles. T he pilot, after sn aggin
g th e ca ble a nd th e pouch with his
hook, hauled th e pou ch into the
airplane and went on to the next point
on hi s ro ute.
After W orld W ar II, airport con ­
struction acce lerated , and by 1949
many co mm un ities served by All
American's pickup system had ade ­
quate air fields. That year, All
Am erican began passenger service,
with DC-3s; it phased o ut its aerialp
ickup m ail service a few months la ter.
T he lin e ch anged its name to All
American Airways in 1949, to
Alle gheny Airlines in 195 3, an d to
U SA ir in 1979.
USAir' s suc cess can be tr aced in
part to Ed Colodny' s zeal to provide
service , an inhe ritanc e from his youth
in Burlington, Vermont, where he was
born in 1926.
" My father had a gro cery in the
d ays before th ere were su pe rmarkets,"
he says. "The housewife would give us
her o rder and we would deliver. H eck ,
we 'd even deliver an order forj us t a
bottle of milk.
" I sta rted out very young in th e
sto re. M y first job was to bag potatoes.
Then I became a help er on th e deliv ery
tr uc k, lu ggin g bags of groceries into
people 's houses. 1 learned at an early
age th at if you want to succeed, you
have to give service ."
Ed Colodny, wh o went to public
schools in Burlington, doesn't recall
a ny great pressure from th e family to
pursu e any particul ar vocation, even
th ou gh an uncle was a promin en t
law yer. His father's ca ree r adv ice was
simple : " I only in sist you don 't
become a retail grocer. "
While a t H arvard , Colod ny was a
sho rt-orde r cook at th e Midget, a wellknown
C ambridge restaurant. The
owne r , he re calls, " always sa id I was
the best counterman he'd ever had ."
C olodny never forgets acco lade s like
that. They reinforce his in sistence on
service. " Som e of those ea rl ier ex ­
peri ences rubbed off on me and shaped
m y view s on wh at an a irline has to
do, " he says.
Aft er grad ua tion from H arvard in
1951 , Co lodny went in to th e Army
Judge Advocate Gene ra l C orps. H e
served as a first lieuten ant at Fort