Tale of the Tagues: An Airline Story, Part 2
[Read first » Tale of the Tagues: An Airline Story, Part 1]
After his first departure from ATA, John Tague and two partners started The Pointe Group, an airline consulting firm with presence in both New York and suburban Washington, D.C. Tague’s only two consulting engagements as an ex-ATA executive were short, almost simultaneous, and quite unusual. At the request of a west coast investment bank, he became the consulting CEO for two ailing regional airlines: Air South, based in Columbia, South Carolina and, a few months later, Vanguard Airlines, based in Kansas City, Missouri.
It wasn’t clear to industry observers at the time how a single CEO was going to simultaneously nurse back to health two struggling airlines that were located 850 miles apart. One analyst, George Hamlin of Global Aviation Systems in Washington, D.C., likened the airlines’ plight to “two drunks staggering down the street trying to hold each other up.”
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Tale of the Tagues: An Airline Story, Part 1
When John P. Tague was promoted by United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton to the post of President last month, it signaled an ironic rise in the career of an executive who may have been instrumental in the downward spirals of four failed airlines.
John Tague, born in 1961, is the son of Irving T. Tague, a memorable figure in U.S. aviation history who got his start as a Pan Am ramp worker in Alaska and was well-known later for leadership at three legendary U.S. carriers: Pan American, Hughes Airwest, and Midway Airlines.
Irving Tague worked his way up through the management ranks at Pan Am, eventually establishing himself as a master planner, scheduler, and economic analyst. While at Pan Am in the early 1970s, Tague’s skills as an operations manager were evident to principals from the aviation consulting firm of Simat, Helliesen, and Eichner (SH&E), who at the time also had billionaire businessman Howard Hughes as their client.
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