FREEWHEELING FREDDIE

TO THE AVIATION WORLD SIR FREDDIE LAKER WAS TRULY A LEGEND IN HIS OWN TIME. A TYCOON OF WORKING-CLASS ORIGINS WHO BUILT UP HIS BUSINESS EMPIRE FROM NOTHING, LAKER MAKES THE ENTREPRENEURS ON “DRAGONS’ DEN” AND “SHARK TANK” SEEM LIKE AMATEURS.

Competing directly against the world’s major airlines, the low-fare carrier that the freewheeling British businessman founded in 1966 shook the commercial aviation industry to its foundations in a manner that few have accomplished before or since.

In the end it took the combined efforts of all the airlines against which Laker was in competition to drive his company out of business in 1982. Since then, however, a number of budget airlines have emulated his business model. Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson acknowledged Laker as his role model and mentor. While not all of Laker’s business decisions turned out well, his rollercoaster career will be long remembered.

Born in Canterbury, England, in 1922, Frederick A. Laker briefly attended the Simon Langton Grammar School, which proudly numbers him as one of its illustrious alumni in spite of the fact that he was expelled for poor academic performance. Laker