Continental Airlines, Inc.

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A Continental Airlines Boeing 757, c. 2005. Boeing developed the single-aisle jetliner alongside the wide-body 767.

Adrian Pingstone

Continental Airlines, Inc., former U.S.-based airline that served North American and overseas destinations via hubs mainly in New York, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Houston, Texas; and Guam. After a merger with United Airlines, it ceased operations under its own name in 2012.

The company traced its history to Varney Airlines, incorporated by Walter T. Varney in 1934. Later it came under the control of Robert Forman Six (president 1938–82), who gave the airline the name Continental and, in the following decades, transformed the shoestring operation into one of the major American transportation companies, headquartered first in Denver and then (from 1963) in Los Angeles, California. By the 1970s it was flying routes from Chicago, Miami, and New Orleans to various continental points westward to the Pacific coast and to Hawaii, the South Pacific, and the Far East, as well as south to Venezuela.

By the 1980s Continental had fallen on hard times. In 1981–82 it was taken over by Texas Air Corporation. The merger incurred heavy debt, and, after bankruptcy proceedings (1983) and reorganization, Continental reduced services by two-thirds. In 1987 other Texas Air subsidiaries—New York Airlines, Inc. (founded 1980), People Express Airlines (1981), and Presidential Airlines (1985)—were merged into Continental Airlines, significantly increasing the company’s aircraft and routes, but it continued to lose money and continued to be debt-ridden. Bitter conflicts between the airline unions and Texas Air’s corporate management (headed by chairman Frank Lorenzo until August 1990) tended to aggravate operations. Continental filed for bankruptcy in December 1990. The airline emerged from bankruptcy in 1993 after being acquired by Air Canada and a group of private investors.

In the early 21st century, because of increasing financial difficulties in a struggling airline industry, Continental underwent a period of major restructuring, which included a decrease in flight routes, a reduction in seating capacity, and employee layoffs and job cuts. In 2007 Continental, in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), introduced a pilot program to allow passengers to receive boarding passes electronically via mobile phone or personal digital assistant (PDA)—the first such initiative by a U.S. airline. Two years later the airline left the SkyTeam Alliance, of which it had been a member since 2005, to join the Star Alliance, the world’s largest global airline partnership. In 2010 Continental merged with United Airlines. However, the two airlines operated separately—as subsidiaries of the newly created United Continental Holdings—while waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a single operating license, which was granted in late 2011. In March 2012 Continental flew its last flight, and subsequently the airlines began flying as one carrier under the United name.