The radical changes in the airline industry has raised many questions as to how the airlines of the future will operate and what may be in store for the traveling public.

Let me say upfront that I spent my entire career in the aviation industry, and although it has been overall a very successful one, I have had my share of failures, from which I have learned a great deal. But I always believed that the customer is king. Robert F. Six, the chairman of Continental Airlines, once told me: "Always remember, it is the consumer that pays our salaries; the company merely handles the money."

Aviation is going through some tough times but I believe that the new style of "nickel and dime" the passengers won’t help.

The extra revenue generated may not cover the overall shortage created by the decline in traffic, and the shabby service that airlines are now providing only serves to alienate passengers.

The new breed of managers fancy themselves as acute business geniuses, but they may fail to understand that a different type of management is required in this new business era, one that realizes that responsibility begins, rather than ends, when the passenger boards the aircraft.

In business, there is nothing more fatal than cunning management. Hopefully they will understand that when times are lean, the airlines must entice passengers by improving — not reducing — the quality of their product.

It seems to me that airline management has forgotten a fundamental principle of business: "Never irritate the minds that you are trying to influence" — in the airlines’ case, the passengers.

Hawaii resident Franco Mancassola was founder of Discovery Air and Debonair Airways, as well as vice president of International Operations for Continental Airlines and World Airways.