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There are 10 quotes matching Gordon Bethune in the collection:
Do you know how much faster I can fix an airplane when I want to fix it than when I don’t want to fix it?
Gordon Bethune
CEO Continental Airlines, quoted in the 2002 book Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up.
It's not a testosterone-driven industry any longer. Success is making money, not in the size of the airline.
Gordon Bethune
Chairman and CEO Continental Airlines, 1996.
There are a lot of parallels between what we’re doing and an expensive watch. It’s very complex, has a lot of parts and it only has value when it’s predictable and reliable.
Gordon Bethune
Chairman and CEO Continental Airlines, 1997.
In airplanes you have a choice between chocolate and vanilla. One year could be vanilla or it could be chocolate. I don’t attach any relevance to which one.
Gordon Bethune
Chairman and CEO Continental Airlines, regards buying Boeing or Airbus products, 2000.
It’s like telling Mozart that there are too many notes in an opera. Which one do you want us to take out?
Gordon Bethune
Chairman of Continental Airlines, regards U.S. government criticism that carriers schedule too many flights, quoted in Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up, 2002.
Since 1978 the record pretty well shows that no start-up airline … has really been successful, so the odds of JetBlue having long-term success are remote. I’m not going to say it can’t happen because stranger things have happened, but I personally believe P.T. Barnum was, in that respect, correct.
Gordon Bethune
CEO Continental Airlines, regards the 70% rise in JetBlue's stock price in the days after its IPO. Comment at Continental’s annual shareholder meeting, 17 April 2002.
I don’t think JetBlue has a better chance of being profitable than 100 other predecessors with new airplanes, new employees, low fares, all touchy-feely … all of them are losers. Most of these guys are smoking ragweed.
Gordon Bethune
CEO Continental Airlines, Time magazine, June 2002.
They don’t realize that while you’re sitting here talking, someone is fucking you. Changing a fare, changing a flight, moving something. There's no autopilot, and that's why I’ve seen a lot of guys come and go.
Gordon Bethune
CEO Continental Airlines, regards his peers at other airlines, Fortune magazine 18 October 2004.
It’s like a shitty pickup. It’s reliable and dependable and it may not be the most exotic thing, but boy, it’s what you want to be in if the weather gets rough.
Gordon Bethune
Former Boeing excutive who also ran Continental Airlines, talking about the 737, interview with Peter Robinson, author of Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing, 2021.
The airline business is the biggest team sport in the world. When you're all consumed with fighting among yourselves, your opponents can run over you every day.
Gordon Bethune
CEO of Continental Airlines from 1994 until his retirement at the end of 2004. Quoted in A Rival’s insights, Chicago Tribune newspaper, 21 August 2021.
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