New Course for Braniff

Dallas-based Braniff Airways never went in much for the frills with which most large U.S. airlines woo the customers. The nation's ninth largest line often gives indifferent service, has been slow to buy new planes, has resisted innovations. Braniff, for example, is a leader in the fight against in-flight entertainment. Last week the line decided to change its course. Invading the Los Angeles executive suite of rival Continental Airlines, it picked a new boss who has won a reputation as one of the industry's brightest young men. Braniff's new president: Harding Luther Lawrence, 44, Continental's executive vice president, who will succeed retiring President Charles E. Beard, 64.

Youngest V.P. Braniff's board chairman, Dallas Financier Troy Post, had planned his raid well. Even before his Greatamerica Corp. bought control of Braniff last summer and installed him as chairman, he had carefully compared Braniff's record with those of five other airlines of comparable size. His finding: Continental had grown faster than all the others--a remarkable 545% in the last ten years. Further study led him directly to Lawrence, who is largely responsible for Continental's record of quality service, imaginative promotion, low costs, on-time performance and efficient use of jets.

Born in Oklahoma and educated in Texas, Lawrence was a Link Trainer instructor during World War II, started a Texas feeder airline with two partners after the war. He flew while studying for a law degree, later took over the sales department of the small line, which changed its name from Essair to Pioneer. Continental got Lawrence in 1955 when it absorbed Pioneer, quickly recognized that he was the most valuable asset acquired in the deal. By 1958, Continental President Robert Six had promoted Lawrence to executive vice president--the industry's youngest--in charge of the airline's day-to-day operations.

Happy to be Back. A husky six-footer with a Texas drawl, Lawrence travels 25% of the time, works six ten-hour days a week at Continental, personally checks every day by interoffice phone on each of the airline's ten divisions. He will be happy to get back to Texas. He and his wife Jimmi met at a Texas sweet potato festival where she was a princess, have three Texas-born children, including an eleven-year-old boy whose name is State Rights.

"My objective," says Lawrence, "is to make Braniff emerge as the most efficient jet operator in the world." Though only ten of its 52 planes are jets, Braniff expects to take delivery this year of 14 British-made BAC-111 medium-range jets, has options to buy a dozen more. The airline, whose routes range as far north as Minneapolis and as far south as Buenos Aires, has also applied for the Dallas-Miami run and for flights between the Pacific Southwest and Northwest. And Harding Lawrence's selection gave new life to rumors that Braniff and Continental will eventually merge, to form the nation's sixth largest airline.

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