HONEST AIRCRAFT
Personal and corporate honesty often pays off in dramatic ways. Donald Douglas, for example, built such a reputation for his aircraft company and worked to preserve it. There was the time Douglas was competing with Boeing to sell Eastern Air Lines its first big jets. Eddie Rickenbacker, who headed Eastern, is said to have told Douglas that his specifications and claims for the DC-8 were close to his competition on everything but noise suppression. He then gave Douglas one last chance to out-promise Boeing on this feature. After consulting his engineers, Douglas reported back that he did not feel he could make that promise. Rickenbacker replied, “I know you can’t. I wanted to see if you were still honest. You just got yourself an order for $135,000,000. Now go home and silence those jets!”
To view this resource, log in or sign up for a subscription plan
