Everything about William A Patterson totally explained
William A. "Pat" Patterson (October
1899 —
1980) was the president of
United Airlines from
1934 until
1966.
Patterson was born on a sugar plantation on
Oahu, Hawaii. When Patterson was 13, his widowed mother moved to
San Francisco, California, while he remained at
Honolulu Military Academy. Not liking the academy, he decided to leave. He persuaded a captain to allow him to work on his ship in exchange for passage to San Francisco.
Instead of finishing high school in San Francisco, Patterson became an office worker at
Wells Fargo bank, though he later attended night school. He became a teller and later a loan officer.
As a loan officer, he authorized a loan to Pacific Air Transport and became an advisor to its founder and president Vern Gorst. When Gorst sold his airline to
Boeing Air Transport, the advice that Gorst was receiving from Patterson brought the latter to the attention of
Philip G. Johnson of Boeing.
Patterson was recruited by Johnson, leaving Wells Fargo in
1929, and moving to
Seattle, Washington to be the assistant to the president of
Boeing Airplane Company and
Boeing Air Transport. In
1931 Boeing Air Transport was one of four airlines that merged into
United Air Lines and Patterson moved to Chicago to become United's general manager.
Two years later, Patterson was promoted to vice president of United. In
1934, in reaction to the
Air Mail Scandal and the departure of Johnson, Patterson became the company's president at the age of 34.
Patterson is credited with starting the profession of
flight attendant — he gave his approval to hire eight nurses to work as flight attendants on a three-month trial basis. On
May 15,
1930, United became the first airline to use flight attendants — a practice that has since been adopted by every major airline. Patterson's daughter, Patti, briefly worked for
American Airlines as a flight attendant. Patterson and
C.R. Smith, the CEO of American, shared a friendly rivalry.
Under Patterson, United invested in new technologies, such as the
DC-4 (with its pressurized cabin) and the
DC-9 a pioneering jet, and purchased Capital Airlines in 1961 to become the United States' largest airline —a title it would hold for nearly 40 years. In
1963, when Patterson became United's CEO and chairman of the board, the airline had more than 30,000 employees.
He was a life trustee of
Northwestern University, and helped establish the
Northwestern University Transportation Center
in
1954. Near the end of his life, he was honored with the creation of the William A. Patterson Distinguished Chair in Transportation through the gifts of more than 12,000 individual and corporate donors. At the time of his death in 1980, the
Patterson Transportation Lecture series was established.
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