Albert Casey, 84; Former Airline Chief
Albert V. Casey, a corporate executive and former chairman of American Airlines who lifted the company into profitability while maneuvering it through the rocky onset of deregulation, has died. He was 84.
Casey, who also served as postmaster general of the United States and as president and chief administrative officer of Times Mirror Co., the now-defunct former owner of the Los Angeles Times, died Saturday at his home in Dallas. Family members said he had not been ill, and they were unsure of the specific cause of death. He had suffered a brain aneurysm in 1976 and subsequent heart problems.
The experienced turnaround executive, who was once described by former Times Publisher Otis Chandler as “a sort of all-purpose running back,” capped his long career with perhaps his most challenging assignment.
In 1991, at age 71, Casey was named by President George H.W. Bush to head the Resolution Trust Corp. The agency was established by Congress in 1989 after the implosion of the nation’s savings and loan industry.
The RTC, which itself was troubled by charges of waste and mismanagement, was charged with selling off assets of the failed S&L; companies as part of a federal bailout estimated to cost taxpayers $500 billion over three generations.
Casey stayed on until 1993, despite a change to the administration of Democratic President Clinton. Throughout his troubled two-year tenure at the RTC, Casey worked to pare bureaucracy and satisfy complaints from a restive Congress and irate taxpayers.
“I’ve spent my life in consumer products. Criticism is the part of the game I enjoy,” he told The Times when he took the job, ticking off complaints he had fielded at Southern Pacific Railroad about late trains; at The Times about missed newspaper deliveries; at American Airlines about baggage sent to the wrong city; and at the Postal Service about long-delayed letters.
In 1988, Casey had been asked by federal regulators to take over the troubled First Republic Bancorp in Dallas just before it failed and was seized a year later.
Casey chaired American Airlines from 1974 until he turned 65 early in 1985 -- longer than any contemporary head of a major airline. It was a turbulent decade. He turned the company around from losses of $49 million in 1974 to a $228-million profit in 1984, despite deregulation and an increase in jet fuel cost from 10 cents to $1 a gallon.
Casey also moved company headquarters from New York to Dallas, saving by his estimate $7 million a year; won union approval of a two-tier wage system to lower costs of new employees; sold hotel interests and invested in oil and gas to offset rising fuel prices; installed an industry-leading computer reservation system; and oversaw massive price restructuring to offer discounts and a move to hub-and-spoke routing through major airports to increase connections. He whittled administrative staff and subsidiaries, and in 1982 helped reorganize American into the holding company AMR Corp.
When he left American, Casey was tapped to make a similar turnaround at the U.S. Postal Service. He again wielded his paring knife, reducing staff, rearranging top management, instigating modern technology including optical scanners, and introducing new products to increase revenue. He served eight months before declaring the job done and went back to Dallas to teach at Southern Methodist University’s Edwin L. Cox School of Business. He later served on the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors.
Casey was in Los Angeles during a decade of major development. He helped former chairmen Norman Chandler and Franklin D. Murphy expand company holdings and income to record highs.
Casey was also instrumental in raising funds for the Music Center in its early years as president of the Performing Arts Council and chairman of the Music Center Arts and Education Fund.
He came to Times Mirror in 1963 as vice president of finance and a year later became executive vice president and a director. In 1966, he was elected to the new position of president and chief administrative officer, a position he retained for eight years.
During that period, the company set records for increasing sales and for several years led all other domestic and foreign newspapers in advertising.
Casey was instrumental in Times Mirror’s purchase of Newsday on New York’s Long Island and the Dallas Times Herald, among other properties; increasing book sales; and diversifying into forest products such as paper and plywood to offset rising newsprint costs. (Times Mirror later sold the Dallas paper.) He also helped oversee construction of a six-story addition to The Times’ complex at 1st and Spring streets in downtown Los Angeles, which became corporate headquarters until Times Mirror Co. was sold to Tribune Co. in 2000.
Born in Boston, Casey earned pocket money in his youth by delivering mail -- experience he would later draw on as postmaster general. He earned his bachelor’s degree and MBA from Harvard and worked his way up through the ranks of Southern Pacific Railroad from 1948 to 1961, becoming assistant vice president and assistant treasurer. He then spent two years as vice president and treasurer of REA Express before moving to Times Mirror.
In 1997, he published his autobiography, “Casey’s Law: If Something Can Go Right, It Should.”
He was married to Eleanor Welch from 1945 until her death from a heart attack in 1989. Casey is survived by their son, Peter, and daughter, Judith; and two grandsons.
No information was available on funeral services.
