https://www.amazon.com/How-become-manufacturers-representative-professional/dp/B0006Y0AQO?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0006Y0AQO
airline and manufacturing executive
He was born near Sweetwater, Texas, the son of William Henry Frye, a rancher, and Nellie Cooley Frye. At the age of fourteen he was awestruck by the sight of a United States Army plane--its pilot having lost his bearings--that landed in their pasture, and resolved to become a flier.
After graduating from high school in 1923, Frye headed for Los Angeles, where he worked as a soda jerk.
He spent his earnings on flying lessons and soon was teaching others to fly. With a partner, Paul Richter, who had a little capital, he bought the Burdett Flying School. Soon they were making more money by doing stunt flying for motion picture producers, among them Howard Hughes, who was shooting Wings.
In 1927 Frye and Richter bought a single-engine Fokker and established Standard Airlines, a flying service between Los Angeles and Phoenix. They sold it in 1930 to Western Air Express, of which Frye later became president.
Commercial aviation barely existed in 1930, but the government was anxious to establish reliable airmail service, which, highly subsidized, could keep an infant airline alive.
In 1930 Postmaster General Walter F. Brown, using airmail contracts as bait, pressed Western Air Express to merge with Transcontinental Air Transport, which had been formed in 1927 by W. W. Atterbury of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Charles A. Lindbergh, and others, to form one of several lines providing coast-to-coast service.
DC-2, modified and designated DC-3, became the symbol of the new air age in the 1930's, when the craft was the chief workhorse of commercial aviation. Frye made TWA the first airline to use the Sperry automatic pilot, wing and propeller deicers, and wing flaps to make landings safer.
His pilots were the first to receive training in celestial navigation.
In marketing air travel, however, Frye was less successful until Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. , told him at a cocktail party that less emphasis on safety and more on the romance of flying was needed.
The severe recession of 1937-1938 wiped out the slender profit margin that TWA had managed to attain and its chief owners, the banking firm of Lehman Brothers and Chicago taxi magnate John D. Hertz, demanded greater emphasis on profit and less on innovation.
Frye and Richter turned to their old friend Howard Hughes, who was growing richer every day from the oil tool business left him by his father. Hughes had always been fascinated by aviation; he made a record-breaking round-the-world flight in 1937. Hughes put up the money, and the three gained control of TWA in 1939.
Turning his attention to securing secondary routes to feed traffic to the main line, Frye soon made TWA the third largest airline, after American and United, in the United States. But it was high-speed, high-altitude, all-weather flying in which Frye and Hughes were interested.
Turning this time to Lockheed, Frye and that company's Robert E. Gross developed a four-engine, three-rudder airplane, much bigger than anything then carrying passengers and capable of flying 400 miles an hour. In the spring of 1944 Hughes and Frye flew the first Constellation, as the new plane was called, from coast to coast in six hours and fifty-eight minutes.
Until Douglas developed his DC-6, the Constellation was the plane on which the postwar commercial aviation industry depended.
TWA had been the first air carrier to sign a military transport contract with the government, flying around the world to places that had seldom seen an airplane before the war. With this experience, and with the "Connie, " as the new plane was immediately nicknamed, Frye proposed to challenge Pan American Airways, the veteran United States overseas airline, for what he expected would be a rich postwar market in international air travel.
But the market did not develop quickly, and despite increasingly expensive promotion by TWA, Pan American got most of it. The Constellation developed problems that required it to be grounded. What was worse, Hughes never shared Frye's enthusiasm for international aviation. When TWA needed large amounts of additional capital, Hughes was slow to respond and insisted on protecting his share of the company.
He was killed in an automobile accident in Tucson, Arizona.
Frye was in charge of operations of Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA), as the new company was called, and became president in 1934. Frye's chief contribution to the rise of commercial aviation was his concentration on fast, comfortable, modern equipment and on devices that made all-weather operation much safer than in the past. He encouraged plane builder Donald W. Douglas to put into production a sleek, low-wing, twin-engine aluminum airplane and bought the first one for TWA in 1934. Frye arranged a $100 million line of credit that called for Hughes to place his stock in a voting trust. Angered, Hughes planned to fire Frye in February 1947; Frye, however, was warned and resigned. He accepted the presidency, and later the chairmanship, of the General Aniline and Film Corporation, positions that left him time to enjoy his Arizona ranch. By the mid-1950's he was ready to return to the aviation business, and he and his associates formed the Frye Corporation to manufacture executive aircraft (1955).
Standing over six feet tall and weighing more than 200 pounds, Frye looked the part of the western rancher; yet he also spent much time reading and writing.
After Mrs. Vanderbilt divorced her husband, she and Frye were married on January 1, 1941.
In 1950 he divorced his wife and married Nevada Smith; they had one daughter.
mother Nellie Cooley Frye 1st wife Helen Varner Vanderbilt
With a partner, Paul Richter, who had a little capital, he bought the Burdett Flying School.
Frye and Richter turned to their old friend Howard Hughes, who was growing richer every day from the oil tool business left him by his father.
