Business & Finance: The Oilfield Shuttle

In Dallas, a woman boarding a Pioneer Air Lines DC-3 with her baby was surprised to have the stewardess present the baby with a new pair of shoes. She need not have been surprised: it was just another Pioneer sales promotion stunt. “We’ll do anything for a customer,” says Pioneer’s Founder and Chairman William F. Long. “We’ll get him a hotel room, rent him a car, lend him a horse, tend the baby, or run errands for him.”

By doing all it can for customers, 56-year-old Bill Long has in five years made his 13-plane outfit the busiest feeder airline in the U.S. In 1950, Long reported last week, Pioneer topped all competitors in passenger miles flown (37 million), was outranked only by Washington, D.C.’s All American in revenue passengers flown. Even after a $400,000 slash in Government mail pay, Long managed to boost Pioneer’s profits by 7%, turn in a tidy net of $135,611.

Bill Long, born in New Florence, Mo., raised in Brownsville, Texas, learned to fly in World War I, barnstormed all over the Rio Grande Valley after war’s end. While flying in & out of Mexico with oil company payrolls, he heard reports of Mayan treasure in an inaccessible jungle. Long later parachuted into the wilderness, barely managed to hack his Way back (emptyhanded) to civilization.

After years of running a flying school at San Antonio and starting a semi-scheduled airline, he landed an airmail route between Brownsville, Amarillo and Houston, sold out in 1937 to Braniff. When World War II began, Long organized four Texas flying schools at the request of the armed forces (“We pitched the textbooks out the window and taught with planes and parts”), turned out 20,000 pilots and 3,500 mechanics. In 1945 he got a CAB certificate, and began flying passengers between Amarillo and Houston. Later, he bought six surplus DC-3s, began using the name Pioneer, and hired onetime Braniff Executive Vice President Robert J. Smith as president to run the line.

Pioneer has built up a shuttle service for oilmen from Dallas and Houston to the vast West Texas oilfields, stops at out-of-the-way spots like Abilene as many as 18 times daily. The company cuts cost corners and avoids frills. It has no downtown ticket offices, sells tickets only at the airports, serves no meals, only sandwiches, orange juice and coffee.

For the past year, Bill Long has been doing Smith’s job while Smith was serving as a deputy to W. Stuart Symington on the National Security Resources Board. Last week, when Smith finished his Government stint and came home, Bill Long decided to take a rest on his 11,000-acre Rough Creek Ranch, 90 miles southwest of Dallas, where he plays polo with local ranchers and businessmen. “The way to live to an old age,” says he, “is to spend a lot of time on a horse. You can’t take a horse into an office, a pool hall or a country club.”