Connect with Fast Company

"Did I tell you about the time I fell off the horse?" asks Bonnie Reitz. "We were doing a rodeo, a customer-appreciation event in Denver. When the chuck wagon tore out around the ring, our horses tore after it. And I don't know how to ride a horse. So I kicked in on my horse's sides instead of pulling back, and it went faster. Finally, it stopped, and I hung on. But it was a big horse, and it shook me off. I landed on my butt, in front of my biggest customers.

"That's how it felt here last Friday, when we laid off all those employees. I walked around the cubicles, watching people pack their boxes. We were all hugging, crying. One guy gave his boss a hat with all the pins that he had collected from the countries that he'd visited. And he said to hang on to it, because he was sure that Continental's business was going to come back and that he'd be rehired.

"It just broke your heart. We had worked so hard. We had created a good company, we were winning awards, we were making money. We were just hitting our stride -- and then we got knocked on our butt. I was stunned.

"Now we've dusted ourselves off, and we've said that we're going to get back on the horse. The only problem is, we haven't got a year to rebuild. And I worry that there are things we can't do anything about. Perhaps war. Or more terrorist acts. Or just fear. We have no control over people being afraid."

Just as there was no antecedent for the terror that stilled America on September 11, there also is no obvious benchmark to suggest what comes next. Is the world changed? Are we? Will we go back to doing what we did before? Or will fear alter the way we think and behave -- who we see, what we buy, and where we go? And one question more: Wherever we go, will we get there by airplane?

On the morning of September 11, the board of directors of Continental Airlines filled a conference room in Houston and gaped, like the rest of the world, at a television screen. What they saw was a commercial jet slamming into one of the two tallest buildings in New York. "It was a surreal experience," recalls Karen Hastie Williams, a Continental board member and a partner at Crowell & Moring, a Washington, DC law firm.

The tragedy shot massive uncertainty into an industry where even minor disruptions cause epic systemic shudders. Airlines model everything, trying to anticipate the unexpected. Passengers show up -- or not. Storms mangle flight plans. Carriers know how to react to such externalities, and worse. But this -- four deadly, deliberate plane crashes, one televised live -- this exploded all of the models.

At Continental, the fallout was all the more staggering for the sense of victory lost. No employees perished; none of its planes were involved in the disaster. But consider this: Seven years ago, the airline had been a flying basket case, a perennial money loser facing a third go-round in bankruptcy court. Then, famously, it started flying its planes on time. It rebuilt relationships with corporate customers and travel agents -- and with its own employees. Continental asked passengers what they wanted, and then followed through. In the first half of 2001, it was one of only two big U.S. airlines to make money.

In the space of a few hours, that storied comeback had been put in jeopardy. Highly leveraged, with no revolving credit in place and its cash flow truncated, suddenly this was a company without a sustainable business model. Continental was not so desperate as chairman and CEO Gordon Bethune described when he barnstormed for government assistance. Still, the situation was dire enough.