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ny' s expan sion program."
At first, Colodny-Alleghen y' s oneman
legal department-focu sed on
C AB work. It was a few yea rs before
the company expanded the legal
department to handle some of Alleghen
y'sothe r legal work. Co lodnys
responsi b ilities also expanded; he was
put in charge of public affairs and
economic analysis as well as leg al
ma tters.
Colodny ca n 't recall th e exact yea r,
but in 1962 or 1963 hejoined Barnes
for cocktails at the rooftop lounge of
the W ash ington Hotel. In the course o f
a general conversation a bo ut the fu ture
o f the a irline, Barn es asked Colodny if
he had any interest in a ca ree r outsid e
the law . They disc ussed the subject for
an hour or so, and then Colodny told
his boss that he would be int er ested if
an opport unity presented itself. After
that , the subjec t lay dormant for yea rs ;
but in 1969, wh en Barnes reor ganized
top management, Co lodny was named
executive vice presid ent for both law
and marketing services.
The latter in volved all ground act ivity
, /light attenda nts, and in-fli ght food
service. Colodny was back in the serv ­
ice business, and hi s entreprene urial
instinct su rfa ced qu ickly. H e had the
/light attendan ts ' u n iforms redesigned
- Allegheny's ste wardesses became
the first to be ou tfitted in hot pants,
wea rin g them for two yea rs in the ea rly
'70s .
" O ur biggest pro blem was makin g
sure we had cou rteou s flight attend ­
an ts," he says. "T hen , you wer en't
com peting on price primarily, you
were competing on serv ice, gro un d
handling , and sche du les to get the
cu stomer in and out on tim e ."
Colodn y saw a lot of the people
u nder his direction in the next few
years. "I spen t a lot of time conductin g
sta tion me etings with personnel ," he
say s. " I still do , bu t it 's ge tt in g more
di fficult because we hav e many more
rou tes and stops."
M any a USAir employee has
reached his attentive ear. W h ile /lying
be twee n sto ps, Colodny is too busy
listen ing to passengers and cre w to
tackle paper work .
H e no t only listens, he marches
along with the pro bing eye of an inspector
general. A spo t on the carp et , a
chipped counter- th ese are the kinds
of th ings a stat ion ch ief hears abou t in
a memo .
Colod ny also ha s an eye on the
16
clock . " In th e 1970s," he says, " we
learn ed that departu re an d arriva l
times were still the most im porta nt
aspect of ou r product . W hat we sell is
tim e . Much of ou r market is less in ­
terested in gla mour and more interested
in proper schedules at
rea sonable pri ces with down -to-ea rth
servi ce ."
Alleghen y began converting its
propeller-driven aircra ft to j ets in
1965. It merged with Lake Central
Airlines in 1968 and with Mohawk in
1972. Three years after that , Le s
Barnes left to become chairman of
R yder Systems, an d there were fou r
contenders fo r the pre sid ency- a
financial vice presiden t, two operational
types, and Ed C olodny.
Traditionally, the heads of airlines
had corne up through opera tions, bu t
in th is case the choice was Co lod ny,
the legal and marketing ex pert, wh o
was tapped for president and C EO .
When Henry Satte rwh ite retired as
ch airman in 1978 , the board named
Co lodny to that jo b, too . By th e end of
Colodny's third year as presiden t and
C EO, Alle gheny had bec ome all-jet
and had extended its system to T exas
and Florida. A year la ter, the route
system was ex tended to Alabama ,
Arizona, Louisian a, and North
Carolina .
It was tim e it sh ed the local-serv ice
image , and on October 28 , 1979, Allegheny
was renamed U SAir .
T oday U SAir has nearly 100 jets
and 11,0 00 em plo yees. Headquartered
in W ashingto n , it ope rates in twentysix
sta tes and also serves Toronto a nd
M on treal.
But there was a time when Ed
C olodn y th ought his airl ine wa s im ­
pe riled . T hat was in 1978, whe n the
indu stry was deregulat ed . Colodny
was not against de regulat ion as su ch ,
bu t he feared tha t without some p rotection
, sm aller airline s like USAir
would have a hard time against the big
ca rriers.
" I tho ught Congress should pass a
b ill that took in to accou nt the disparity
in size," he say s. " Fo r exam ple, by
giving smaller carriers a p riority in
achie ving ro ute expansion over the
larger carr iers for some period of
time ."
Ed Colodny recalls that battle on
Capitol H ill with a shak e of his head.
" W ha t we h ad not fully recogn ized
th en wa s that we had more pluses than
some of the large ca rr iers," he says.
" T hey had locked in to lon ger-haul
ro u tes with h igh er den sity requ irements,
particula rly for the wid e-bodied
jets. T hey didn't have the right equ ipment
to serve th e shorter-ha ul market.
O u r smaller jets had m ore expans ion
ca pability and gave us flex ibili ty.
" W e were abl e to get be tter utilization
out of our assets and im prove the
ea rnings picture to a much greater
de gree than the larger ca rr ier /leets.
T hat explai ns why, since de regu lation ,
sm aller airlines have done rela tively
well in com parison with the bigger
ca rr iers. "
T he lifting of m ore than forty yea rs
of regul atory controls from the airline
industry in 1978 forced manage ment
to ad op t a new mentality , ob serves
C olodny, a mem ber of the boa rd o f
d irectors of the U .S . C hamber of
C ommerce .
" We now have to m ake decisions in
m in utes, " he say s, " not mont hs or
yea rs, and with ou t going th roug h the
C ivil Aeron au tics Board, m uch less
th ro ugh sets of eco no mists, lawy ers,
and legal briefs."
Ed Colodny's lo ng-te rm p rogra m
for USAir is sim ple an d co ncise- for
the ai rline to co nt inu e to do wh at it
docs best and make a pro fit. His persona
llong -term plans are not as well
defined, excep t that whe n the time
comes to leave USAir, he wan ts to
move to a d ifferent career rather than
retir e . He notes th at he has two
sons- M ark , fifteen , and D avid, th irteen-
to ed uca te . (He also has a
twenty-eight-year-old da ugh ter fro m
h is first marri a ge, wh ich ended in
divorce in 1960 .) H is second wife,
N ancy , whom he married in 1965 , was
a systems en gine er for IB M . She now
has anothe r career go ing , as a com ­
put er consultan t.
These days, Ed Co lodny finds himself
with three fish ing fanatics on his
hands wh en the weather is good on the
Chesa peake Bay . No t a fisherman
hi mself, Colony skippers h is twentyfour-foot
cuddy-cab in Sea Ray for his
wife an d sons in sea rch of stripers and
blues . H is other sport is golf, and he
(continued on p 40)
R eprinted with permissionf rom NATION 'S
BUS IN ESS, December 1982. Copyright 1982
by NAT ION'S BUS INE SS, Chamberof
Commerce of the United States.