Continental Airlines (IATA: CO , ICAO: COA , Callsign: CONTINENTAL ) (NYSE: CAL) is a United States certificated air carrier. Based in Downtown Houston, Texas, it is the fourth-largest airline in the US based on revenue passenger miles. Since 1998, Continental's marketing slogan has been " Work Hard, Fly Right ."
Continental operates flights to destinations throughout the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific regions. Together with its subsidiaries it has more than 4,000 daily departures, serving 133 domestic and 132 international destinations and has 43,246 employees (as of June 2009). Principal operations are from its three hubs at Newark Liberty International Airport (in Newark, New Jersey), George Bush Intercontinental Airport (in Houston, Texas), and Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (in Cleveland, Ohio). Continental Micronesia, a wholly owned subsidiary, operates routes around Micronesia from its hub at Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport in Guam and connects the Micronesian region with destinations in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Honolulu and Cairns, Australia.
Continental Airlines is a minority owner of ExpressJet Airlines, which operates under the trade name Continental Express but is a separately managed and publicly-traded company. Chautauqua Airlines also flies under the Continental Express identity, and Cape Air, Colgan Air, CommutAir, and Gulfstream International Airlines feed Continental's flights under the Continental Connection identity. Continental does not have any ownership interests in these companies.
Continental left SkyTeam on October 24, 2009 and joined Star Alliance on October 27, 2009.
History
Early history: 1931-1958
Continental Airlines began service in 1934 as Varney Speed Lines (named after one of its initial owners, Walter T. Varney, who was also a founder of United Airlines) operating out of El Paso and extending through Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Las Vegas, NM to Pueblo, CO. The airline commenced operations with the Lockheed Vega, a single engine plane that carried four passengers. The airline later flew other Lockheed planes, including the Lockheed L-9 Orion, the Lockheed Electra Junior, and the Lockheed Lodestar.
Following cancellation of all domestic airmail contracts by the Roosevelt administration in 1934, Robert Six learned of an opportunity to buy into the Southwest Division of Varney Speed Lines, which needed money to handle its newly-won Pueblo-El Paso route. Six was introduced to Louis Mueller (who would serve as Chairman of the Board of Continental until February 28, 1966). Mueller had helped found the Southwest Division of Varney in 1934 with Walter T. Varney. As an upshot of all this, Six bought into the airline with $90,000 and became general manager on July 5, 1936. Varney was awarded a 17-cent-rate airmail contract between Pueblo and El Paso; it carried passengers as a sideline. The carrier was renamed Continental on July 8, 1937. Six relocated the airline's headquarters to Denver Union (later Stapleton) Airport in Denver in October, 1937.
Robert F. Six was one of the colorful group of innovators, pioneers, and visionaries (including Juan Trippe, William A. Patterson, Jack Frye, C.R. Smith, and Eddie Rickenbacker) who established and built the U.S. airline industry. Throughout his life, Six had a reputation as a combative and risk-taking executive who presided forcefully over the airline that was largely forged in his image for more than 40 years.
During World War II Continental's Denver maintenance facilities became a conversion center where the airline converted B-17s, B-29s and P-51s for the United States Army Air Force. Profits from military transportation and aircraft conversion enabled Continental to contemplate expansion and acquisition of new aircraft types which became available following the war. Among those types were the DC-3, the Convair 240 and the Convair 340. Some of the DC-3's were acquired as surplus military aircraft following World War II. The Convairs were the first aircraft operated by Continental that were pressurized.
The airline's early route network was limited to the original El Paso to Denver route, with routes being added during the Second World War from Denver and Albuquerque across Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. By 1946 Continental had expanded new routes from Denver to Kansas City and to Tulsa/Oklahoma City, and from El Paso and Albuquerque to San Antonio. Each of these routes included intermediate stops in several of 22 smaller cities. In 1953 Continental achieved its first major expansion by merging with Pioneer Airlines, gaining access to 16 additional cities in Texas and New Mexico. These Pioneer destinations integrated well with the Continental's post-World War II routes, and provided impetus for the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the industry regulator, to subsequently streamline CAL's routes from Denver to the principal traffic points in Texas, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma. However, Continental was, like most U.S. carriers of the day, essentially a limited regional operation. Bob Six was highly dissatisfied with this situation. He vigorously petitioned the CAB for longer haul routes to larger cities, a part of his plan to transform the regional into a trunkline like United, TWA, and American. Simultaneously, he was quietly discussing with Boeing for Continental to become one of the first among the world's airlines to operate the soon-to-be-launched 707 jet aircraft. The timing was crucial, since the new routes would justify the 707s, and vice versa.
The "Airline that needed to grow," 1959-1969
By the end of the 1950s, Six's strategy had succeeded. Continental Airlines had seen a broad expansion of its routes, thanks to a responsive CAB and persistent efforts by Six, who frequently referred to his company as, "the Airline that needs to grow." In 1957 it flew for the first time from Chicago to Los Angeles (both nonstop, and via Denver); and non-stop from Denver and Los Angeles to Kansas City. Continental Airlines introduced turboprop service with the Vickers Viscount, on the new medium haul routes. The CAB permitted Continental to drop service at many of the smaller cities on the system, enabling the carrier's new aircraft to operate more economically between points with longer lengths-of-haul. Prior to the introduction of its Boeing 707 jets, Continental acquired the popular DC-7s to operate its non-stop route from Los Angeles to Chicago, as well as Denver-Los Angeles and Chicago-Kansas City (see photos).
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Six clearly established himself as the airline industry's leading lower-fare advocate. He correctly predicted that increased traffic, not higher fares, was the answer to the airline industry's problems. Six stunned the industry when he introduced the economy fare on the Chicago-Los Angeles route in 1962. He later pioneered a number of other low or discount fares which brought air travel to many who otherwise could not have afforded it. One of Continental's early innovations was a system-wide economy excursion fare which cut the standard coach fares by more than 25 percent.
As Six had planned, Continental was one of the earliest operators of the Boeing 707, taking delivery of its first of four 707s in spring of 1959. Although Pan Am and TWA inaugurated 707 service a few weeks before Continental did, Continental was the first airline in the world to widely use the Boeing 707 in domestic service, first utilizing the type on the Chicago-Los Angeles nonstop route on June 8, 1959. However, because Continental's 707 fleet was small relative to other carriers, it required radical innovations to the 707 maintenance program. To maintain its small jet fleet Continental developed an industry first: the innovative "progressive maintenance" program enabled Continental to fly its 707 fleet seven days a week, 16 hours a day, achieving greater aircraft utilization than any other jet aircraft operator in the airline industry.
Six, not being satisfied with 707 service alone, introduced exclusive innovations and luxe cuisine with Continental's 707 operations which were described as, "...nothing short of luxurious" by the Los Angeles Times , and, "...clearly, the finest in the airline industry" by the Chicago Tribune.
Beginning in the early 1960s Continental added routes from Los Angeles to Houston, both nonstop and with 1- and 2-stop services to Houston via Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Midland-Odessa, Austin, and San Antonio. New service was also inaugurated from Denver to Seattle, Portland, New Orleans, and Houston (to Houston: both nonstop, and with 1- and 2-stop services via Wichita/Tulsa/Oklahoma City). In 1963 the company's headquarters were moved from Denver to Los Angeles.
During the late 1960s, the company disposed of the last of its turboprop and piston powered aircraft—one of the first U.S. airlines to do so. Continental replaced the Viscount fleet with DC-9s from Douglas Aircraft and began an
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