[1] The Great Depression forced Robert Crandall's father to leave Rhode Island to work selling life insurance, which resulted in multiple relocations.

[4] During the latter period of Crandall's tenure as CEO, investor concern over airline bankruptcies and falling stock prices caused Crandall to remind his employees about the dangers of investing in airline stocks.

[5][6] Crandall is credited with creating the first major mileage-reward frequent flyer program in the airline industry, the AAdvantage program, as well as pioneering modern reservations systems through the creation of Sabre.

[7] Crandall also serves as a senior adviser and sits on the board of AirCell, an in-flight telephony company which won the larger of two licenses for air-ground data service that provide in-flight broadband service.

[8] In 1998, he retired from American and he went on to work as director of many other companies, including Celestica, Haliburton, and Anixter.

Our airlines, once world leaders, are now laggards in every category, including fleet age, service quality and international reputation.

If you look at the number of cities that have lost commercial service, you'll see there's a whole lot of places in the country that used to be part of the network that aren't anymore.

One story that has been frequently retold since is that he came up with the idea to remove one olive from every salad served to passengers.