TERROR ON FLIGHT 800: MORE TROUBLE FOR RESURGENT TWA

Until last week's disaster, TWA could point proudly--as CEO Jeffery Erickson did publicly--to an admirable safety record. Its financial history, on the other hand, has been absolutely dismal. TWA has flown in and out of bankruptcy twice this decade, losing more than $2 billion in the process. It has managed to survive largely on the willingness of its workers, who own 30% of the company, to grant whopping concessions to keep it from following fellow pioneers Pan Am and Eastern into aviation history.

Not only has TWA survived, but the carrier once piloted by mogul Howard Hughes and later by corporate...

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