Happy Hunting

For air travelers, it takes only six hours to fly from Chicago to Los Angeles. For Continental Air Lines, which next month flies the route regularly for the first time, the journey will have taken 20 years--with most of the progress made in the past five. In 1952 Continental was still an obscure regional trunk line serving a few Western cities. Today its routes cover nearly half the nation. Its net last year alone almost doubled to $710,426. When its first gleaming DC-7B sweeps down over Los Angeles, carrying coach-fare passengers in luxury style, Continental will become a major competitor in the nation's aviation network.

Abiding Passion. Piloting Continental is President Robert Six, 49, a burly Californian who is not only a Man of Distinction (1947) for Calvert whisky but for Ethel Merman, his musicomedienne (Happy Hunting) wife. With a Westerner's derring-do, Six has dabbled in oil wells, uranium and chemicals, hunts elk in Colorado, backs shows on Broadway (Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?).

An Oakland surgeon's son, Six began inauspiciously by quitting high school, thereafter became a merchant seaman, bill collector, turned to flying at 21 after Lindbergh's transatlantic flight had fired his imagination. Six started a flying school that failed, spent a year as a part-time copilot for China National Aviation, ended up a delivery hand for the San Francisco Chronicle. Soon tiring of that, Six began selling Beechcrafts on the Pacific Coast, set himself up as an aviation consultant.

Takeoff. In tiny Varney Air Transport, operating 520 miles through Texas and Colorado, Six found his future. He bought half the company (100 shares at $500 each), raised another $90,000 to help buy three twin-engined Lockheed 125, and became Varney vice president of operations at $400 a month. Varney changed its name to Continental, and Six, made president in 1938, slowly plotted routes outward from Pueblo to Denver, by 1948 had 2,772 miles through Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma. As a further step, Six made interchange deals with American Airlines, United and Braniff. which permitted him to book customers to the West Coast.

In 1955 came Continental's big break. It merged with debt-ridden Pioneer Air Lines, giving Six 1,860 more route miles and access to the air hub of Dallas, gateway to a rich transcontinental traffic. By last year Continental's annual revenues had quadrupled since 1947 to $18.5 million. To its present 31 planes (ranging from two DC-7Bs to 15 DC-3s) it plans to add 22 new ones by 1959, a $62 million order that includes 15 Vickers Viscount propjets, four Boeing 707 turbojets.

Slicker Service. To boost profits to pay for such expansion--and compete with bigger lines--Continental plans plush service all the way. Beginning April 28, the twice-daily Chicago-Denver-Los Angeles DC-7B flights (one way: $76, plus food and drinks) will be the first regular all-coach service operated with the same trimmings as first-class service.

In the jet future, thinks bustling Bob Six, Continental's chances can be bright indeed if it keeps expanding. Already approved by CAB is a Chicago-Los Angeles nonstop jet service due to start in mid-1959. Ahead lies pending approval for nonstop Dallas-San Francisco service. Even more ambitious is a possible interchange with Capital Airlines, creating a new coast-to-coast system nearly as big as any of the four big U.S. lines.

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