Frank Lorenzo: Crisis, Deregulation, and Setting the Record Straight

FranklinCovey On Leadership with Scott Miller

FranklinCovey

Business, Management

4.9 • 851 Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Frank Lorenzo, legendary airline executive and author of Flying for Peanuts, reflects on the high-stakes world of aviation, business transformation, and leadership under fire. From pioneering low-cost fares and managing massive union battles to negotiating with Donald Trump and leading through tragedy, Frank shares lessons learned from decades in the cockpit of industry change. He also opens up about reputation, resilience, and the human cost of leadership, offering hard-earned wisdom for anyone navigating complexity, criticism, or crisis. This candid conversation sets the record straight—and shows what it really takes to lead during turbulent times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Franklin Covey's Twice Weekly podcast on leadership with Scott Miller.
0:17.2	I'm your host now, nearly seven years in close to 500 episodes taped with all sorts of people from all walks of life.
0:26.0	Twice weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays, I have the privilege of having conversations with entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, also wannpreneurs.
0:35.4	People who are CEOs or mid-level leaders, perhaps they are celebrities,
0:39.5	book authors, academics, researchers, you name it all, focused on investing in you and making
0:46.0	you a better leader, perhaps formally in your career or even informally less in your personal
0:51.6	life or with your family. Franklin Covey, of course, founded in part
0:55.6	by Stephen Covey, the author of the seminal book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
1:01.2	who I was privileged to spend about 15 of my 25 years in the firm mentoring under, and he would
1:06.7	be delighted to see all the guests that have come on with common values and common vision for
1:11.1	leadership and entrepreneurial growth. Our guest today is the renowned entrepreneur and leader,
1:18.2	Frank Lorenzo. You may know him as the former CEO of a variety of airlines, including
1:22.9	Continental Airlines. And Frank has recently released a bit of a business memoir that talks about the
1:28.4	lessons that he learned across his many decades in not just the aviation business, but in
1:33.6	related businesses as well. His new book is titled Flying for Peanuts. The tagline is
1:40.3	tough deals, steep bargains, and revolution in the skies. Joining us from the East Coast
1:46.5	today is Frank Lorenzo. Welcome to On Leadership. Thank you, Scott. Nice to be here. It is an honor
1:52.8	to have you here. There is a reason why your book is titled Flying for Peanuts. Would you rewind a
1:59.3	little bit to that nomenclature? I think there was a marketing
2:02.6	campaign around that. Reorient everybody to why the book is titled flying for peanuts.
2:07.5	Well, it was actually the suggestion of a daughter of ours. The book was named that
2:15.2	after a fair program that we initiated in 1986 just before deregulation was legislated.
	...

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