Lessens From Our Fathers

FlyingTalkers By Geoffrey Arend

Now hear this here is the true cradle of modern air cargo thinking from some airline people long gone and nearly forgotten.Once upon a time there were two giant all cargo airlines operating from the USA to points internationally.From Los Angeles to the Pacific & Asia was Flying Tigers and from New York Across the Atlantic to Europe,Africa,the Middle East and India was Seaboard World Airlines.This is about Seaboard World Airlines and specifically some excellent people that learned air cargo from its people.On October 1, 1980 Seaboard World Airlines was absorbed by The Flying Tiger Line, Inc., and on December 16, 1988 The Flying Tiger Line, Inc., was absorbed by the Federal Express Corporation.I was thinking about people in our business recently watching Fred Smith on TV talking air cargo.Once upon a time there was John Mahoney at Seaboard talking air cargo.

That was 50 years ago.

Interesting that the last big time air cargo type, Smith out on the hustings commanding the widest audience of any airline executive in world history (he certainly has also been on top the longest) can look back to a time when big ideas of how to air cargo came from a company he ended up buying.

Here we share some Seaboard thinking and also several direct quotes from Mahoney that in 2024 although the talk is aged as we move along 50 years later at jet speed, still makes perfectly good sense.