Interview conducted by Carol McLaughlin on April 7, 1999.
Indexing completed by Irene Bluth on 8/15/2002
The interview describes Captain William Dixon’s career as a ticket agent, chief clerk of the TWA news bureau, co-pilot, pilot, director of flying, general manager of flying (chief pilot), and manager of pilots from 1936 to 1977; training and service in the military as a transport pilot; training as a commercial pilot with TWA; aircraft he flew: Fairchild PT 19, Cessna UC-78, Curtiss C-46 Commando, Douglas C-47 Skytrain, DC-3, DC-4, Martin 404 and 202, Convair 880, Lockheed Constellation L-049 and L-749, Boeing 707 and 747; base cities: Kansas City, Wilmington, San Francisco, and New York; routes he flew: Kansas City to New York, Chicago, Albuquerque, Indianapolis, and Cleveland, New York to Madrid, Paris, and Ireland, and San Francisco to New York, Chicago, Hawaii, Guam, Okinawa, Saigon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Tokyo; salary he earned in his various capacities; importance of seniority relative to job security; involvement with the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) strike in 1946; encounters with Jack Frye (President of TWA), David Benke (President of ALPA), Walter Cronkite, Eleanor Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Harry Truman; experiences piloting the airplane carrying the White House press corps during Nixon’s two flights to China in 1972 and the airplane with the press corps into Moscow in 1974; effects of Carl Icahn’s management of TWA; experiences in management during various crises; writing instruction manuals and of articles about the airline industry.
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