PERSONNEL: Short Flight at T.W.A.

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When Carter Burgess, Assistant Secretary of Defense for manpower got the offer of the job as president of Trans World Airlines a year ago, he told friends: "Opportunity and danger are very much alike." The opportuniy was obvious: he took over the nation's fourth larges air carrier at $65,00 a year (v. his $19,000 Government pay) with the goal of getting it our of the red. The danger: eccentric Howard Hughes. T.W.A's owner. a boss as hard to please as a psychiatrist.

For a whilee, Burgess, 41 appeared to be making the most of his opportunity. A seven-day-week worker, he rode the T.W.A. routes restlessly in search of flaws in passenger service, routed out T.W.A. executives to make them ride the routes on their days off, and trimmed the payroll. T.W.A.'s financial postion improved markedly. By the end of September, T.W.A. managed to show a nine-month 1957 profit of $2,400,000 v. $2,300,000 loss for all of 1956.

But in doing so, harddriving, not over-tactful Burgess alienated many T.W.A executives, fell out with Hughes himself. Last week Hughes Tool co. (which owns 77% of T.W.A.) put out a short announcement;Burgess had quit as president and director of T.W.A. both Hughes and Burgess said that parting was "friendly," and Hughes praised Burgess for his "great engergy, dedication and devotion to T.W.A." But the two could not agree on how to run the airline and on future policy, and Burgess tore up his three-year contract.