The Strikers' Airline

The nation's newest airline, Superior Airlines, is scheduled to start service next week in the Southeastern states. Superior stands apart from all other airlines: it was organized by the golden-winged Air Line Pilots Association in an attempt to make a scheduled line knuckle under to its wage demands. The target: Southern Airways, a small feeder line that has 23 DC-3s, some 5,000 miles of routes between Jacksonville, Fla., Memphis and Charlotte, N.C. and a tough boss, Frank W. Hulse, 48, who founded the line 17 years ago.

Southern's 139 pilots and copilots, all ALPA members, walked off their jobs last June when Hulse turned down their demands for shorter hours, a boost in wages (captains were making an average of $13,000 annually) and changes in the working rules, notably the elimination of a clause in the company's manual that prohibits married pilots from dating stewardesses. Hulse said that the demands would boost the line's operating expenses $665,000 a year, and since he is already getting $3,200,000 a year in government subsidy, he was not at all sure that he could get the necessary increase to cover the new expenses. So he decided to battle it out. "A man's got to stand somewhere," said he, "and we're standing."

Hulse went to work to hire pilots to replace the strikers, soon had a full crew who had been laid off by other lines. To go to work for Southern, some of them repudiated their ALPA memberships. The striking pilots, who get tax-free strike benefits of $710 a month from ALPA, fought back by picketing the Southern's offices, filed more than 100 suits against the company. By October Southern was not only flying all of its routes but also had added a new leg in Tennessee. There upon the striking pilots, backed by $300,000 from ALPA, decided to form their own line as a subsidiary of Valparaiso Aero Service, a charter service in Indiana. They leased five seven-passenger de Havilland Doves. Since Valparaiso already had FAA certification as an air taxi service, Superior did not need a certificate to fly scheduled routes. While the striking pilots do not have the planes to compete with Southern on all routes, they hope to damage Southern by skimming the cream off the busiest routes.

Southern's Hulse says he is not unduly worried. He thinks he can run his line in definitely without the strikers.

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