Personnel: New President at TWA

• Share

After eight months of shopping. Trans World Airlines finally got a new president and chief executive officer. He is Charles C. Tillinghast Jr., 50, former vice president of Bendix Corp., and a friend of onetime Ford Motor Co. Chairman Ernest Breech, who joined the TWA board as a representative of the creditors who lent the line $165 million for new jets.

Four weeks ago Breech approached Tillinghast about taking the TWA post. "I had some real questions," admits Tillinghast. "The careers of recent TWA presidents have been rather short." There have been five in the past 14 years, largely be cause of conflicts with eccentric Howard Hughes, who owns 78% of TWA stock. But Breech and two other trustees got the right to vote Hughes's stock. The di rectors assured Tillinghast of a free hand, and he signed on.

Tillinghast's first task at TWA will be to line up financing for more jets. TWA has trailed its chief competitors, American and United, as its share of the passenger traffic has dipped. Despite these difficulties the line is expected to report 1960 earnings of more than $6,000,000.

Tillinghast, a varsity football center at Brown University ('32), graduated from Columbia Law School in 1935 and joined a Manhattan law firm. In 1942, when Ernie Breech became president at Bendix, he signed up the law firm, and Tilling hast handled Bendix affairs. In 1957 Tillinghast joined Bendix, became director of its foreign operations.