TURNAROUND

Meridian Air is three years old, twenty aircraft, one base, five cities and forty-eight million dollars of launch debt, and one of those cities is stranded in a state where you have no base. Ten half-year periods. You set fares route by route against what the incumbent charges, decide whether to fight for a primary gate or fly to the field out of town, order aircraft that arrive late and hire crew that arrives later, pad the schedule, and climb or hold a five-rung product ladder that adds minutes to every turn across the whole fleet.

Underneath it runs the mechanism that has killed real airlines: lenders price off reported cash, and reported cash includes forward-booking float, so a growing loss-maker looks creditworthy right up until growth stops. And every winter carries a storm that is survivable exactly until its severity exceeds the reserve crews, padding and spare fleet you bought before you needed them. Past that, crew re-pairing fails and the operation melts down. Twenty-four calibrated markets, graded as capture against each market’s own ceiling, so a student who played a hard market well outranks one who drew an easy one.