CHAPTER FIVE

TTA MODERNIZES AND EXPANDS

In 1955, the new $5,000,000 terminal was completed for Houston International Airport, and Trans-Texas moved in, along with American, Braniff, Continental, Delta, Eastern, KLM Royal Dutch, National, Pan-American, and Slick…. In 1960, Trans-Texas expanded dramatically. We contracted for twenty-five used Convair 240s from American Airlines… On September 1, 1967, I officially became the Vice President of Flight Operations for Trans-Texas Airways, and I served until September of 1971… The phone rang quite often during the wee hours of the morning, and those middle of the night calls could be harrowing…Leon Hassler was landing at Harlingen and somehow flew under a light aircraft … and picked him up on the top of his big DC9…and the plane slid back … and lodged against the vertical stabilizer of the DC9’s tail. The landing gear on the little plane straddled the fuselage of the big airplane, and held it on. It rode the DC9 all the way to the runway. When Hassler dropped the nose of the DC9 to land, the little plane slid off onto the grass, flipped over and landed upside down. Hassler taxied on to the terminal, not knowing exactly what he had done. The pilot of the small plane was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

CHAPTER SIX

TRANS TEXAS BECOMES TEXAS INTERNATIONAL

On November 1, 1968, the final flight from the Trans Texas Airline hangar …was made, the TTA sign was taken down off the top of the hangar, and a new sign was put up, announcing to the world that Texas International Airlines (TI) had been born….At exactly 12:01 a.m., April 1, 1969, Trans Texas Airways was no more, and Texas International Airlines, Inc, became a reality… I had … tried very hard to be a good executive…but it wasn’t what I loved doing, … So, in September of 1971, I went back to my flying, and dearly loved it.  I spent the last ten years of my career flying. We flew the DC3, the Convair 240, Convair 600 Silver Cloud and the DC9 Pamperjet… until I retired… On June 11, 1980, Frank Lorenzo established a holding company, Texas Air Corporation, for Texas International… Texas Air seized the debt-ridden Continental Airlines in 1982, then merged Texas International with Continental, and renamed the combined organization Continental Airlines. The last Texas International flights flew in 1982, the year before I retired.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Other business ventures

One topic that we haven’t covered was the time I started my own airline… (In 1971) I established a cargo airline I called High Airways International. I was the Chairman of the Board and President of HAI, and Harper was the first Vice President. In the beginning, there were just the two of us. All we had to do next was get financing and buy some airplanes…

CHAPTER EIGHT

AJ TAKES HIS WINGS OFF

Inevitably, the time came for my retirement... retiring airline pilots can’t fly past midnight the night before their 60th birthday. My birthday was April 8th, so on April 7, 1983, I made that last flight… You have to know how much I love flying to understand about what it meant to me to be going on my last flight. I was unable to make any of my announcements all day long, because I was so choked up…I have to grin every time I remember my last approach to the airport.  I circled the plane around, and coming back in for the final approach they cleared me for the flyby option, which gave me the chance to make one glorious pass full throttle down the runway…

CHAPTER NINE

MY RETIREMENT PROJECT

I was never one to sit idly at home, so in 1998, I lent my support to the Houston Aeronautical Heritage Society’s project to restore the old 1940 Houston Municipal Airport Terminal building at William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas. This is the terminal, where I was one of the original sixteen pilots who started Trans Texas Airways, and the terminal in which I became Captain A.J. High. It was also a beautiful, historic art deco building. I was happy to become involved in such a great historic project.

CHAPTER TEN

FAMILY NOTES

My paternal grandparents were John G. and Mallie High. They had the typical large farm family of eight children that we can document… I don’t remember much about my grandparents because they died when I was still young… My mother, Eva, was the daughter of Thomas Jefferson Harper and Ida Felicia Donaldson… She was not only an accomplished studio photographer, but an artist as well… My grandfather, Thomas Harper, moved from town to town in Texas, setting up photography studios… He had a booming business in …family photographs, posed studio shots, etc… he had studios in Dallas, Marshall, Galveston, Houston and Beaumont…  He once took a picture of the famous Texas outlaw Jesse James, but refused to let his work become part of the sensational publicity that surrounded Jesse James and his gang, so the photo is not well known to historians.

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