Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to this conversation about Minnesota's Phoenix from the ashes of Braniff to Sun Country Airlines, a new nonfiction book from Calumet Editions that tells the remarkable story of how a group of displaced Braniff International employees helped build Sun Country Airlines after BRANF's collapse in 1982.
Before we begin, I want to note that I work with Calumet Additions, publisher of this book, and this interview is part of cand's promotional work for the title. With that said, the story itself is a fascinating piece of Minnesota aviation history. The tale of bankruptcy, resilience, entrepreneurship, friendship, and the improbable creation of what became known as Minnesota's hometown airline. Our guest is Maggie Hill, one of the original sun country flight attendants and one of the key figures behind the preservation of this history.
Maggie spent seven years with Braniff and more than 40 years with Sun country, retiring from flying in 2022 after a career that carried her across the United States and around the world.
She was there in the airline's earliest days when the founders and crews were doing whatever needed to be done. Sewing aprons, preparing cabins, loading supplies, reassuring passengers, and building a culture from scratch.
Maggie also became an unofficial historian of Sun Country.
She recorded oral histories, collected artifacts, preserved uniforms, and helped ensure that the memories of the airline's founders, flight attendants, pilots, and early employees would not be lost.
Her work, along with that of Karen Fernandez and Jennifer Kimball Gasparini, helped shape Minnesota's Phoenix into both a company history and a deeply human story about the people who refused to let One Airlines collapse be the end of their careers. Maggie Hill, thank you for joining us.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: The book says this project began as your retirement goal to preserve the memories of Sun Country's earliest days. What was the moment when you realized if I don't record this now, this story could disappear?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Well, towards the end of my career, most of the pilot founders were approximately, you know, from Branif days, were approximately 10 years older than me. So that would have put them, you know, you know, in the 80s. And I, sadly, I. I thought that I could start when I retired in December of 22, but they started passing away and I thought, oh my gosh, we're, you know, missing that story. We're missing this person's personal perspective. And so it, it definitely wasn't something I could wait on. It gave me great impetus to begin recording things anyway, not doing in depth, you know, organize organizing of the work, but at least getting. Getting their thoughts on tape.
So sadly, we did miss a lot of voices for which I am, you know, sad that they didn't get into the book. And I apologize to all the families who have missed their loved ones. Words.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: After becoming something like the airline's unofficial historian, how did your role change from living the story to collecting and protecting the legacy?
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Well, early on, of course, you know, Braniff died and, you know, when we started sun country, it was like if there was something in the paper, we were certainly, you know, proud of that. And I started clipping things out of the paper. And first of all, I love history as a subject, but I started this collection of things and I had mounds and mounds of paper and I dutifully date it, know, to track our progress.
So like I said, we were proud. It's like, what, Build your own airline? Who does that? So. So it was just, it was kind of, you know, a feather in our cap to have all these articles. So that, that was the first way I started kind of not becoming an unofficial historian, but, you know, wanting to save the story. It was just such a great story. I couldn't see it disappearing because nobody took the time to tell it to anyone and record it for posterity.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Sun country is Minnesota's hometown airline. From your perspective, what made it feel Minnesotan not just geographically, but culturally as well?
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Well, yes, I mean, you know, Northwest would probably like to beg to differ about the hometown airline, but they actually were incorporated, I believe, in Detroit, Michigan, to the best of my knowledge. So we could really hold that claim that we were Minnesota's airline.
And, you know, it. You know, again, it wasn't just geography. It was that culture of being thoroughly Midwestern. You know, this charter company would not have worked on either coast because they weren't used to charter service or anything. But our local people throughout the state and the five state area were used to getting on charters in the wintertime after, you know, all their summer work of perhaps farming and agricultural pursuits, you know, were put on hold. So then they, we take them down to Vegas or Orlando or Mexico. And this was kind of the basis of our passenger loyalty and our cultural ethic was give these people whatever they want the best passenger service that they could ever, you know, hope to have. Because, you know, being unemployed was a great incentive to keep our jobs. So. And our lead flight attendant, her name was Joan Smith, and she was so oriented to passenger service.
It was just a people focused airline, you know, one, you know, with the employees on the airplane and then with the passengers, you know, that just kind of flowed over to the passengers.
There was a unity of purpose there was a can do spirit. It was just a hard working midwestern ethic which made it kind of uniquely Minnesotan. We, we call it, you know, we, we just, we were the can do airline. Anything that, you know, people wanted, you know, there was a charter flight for it. So it was, you know, just, you know, really brought on by the needs of the passengers. So we worked really hard and, and had fun doing it.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Speaking of this can do attitude, I want to ask you about the early sun country culture because it seems almost unimaginable today.
There was pilots you talk about in the book for loading carts, flight attendants cleaning planes, employees using personal checkbooks, crews use whatever had to be done.
What did that everybody does everything culture create that you think a more polished corporate structure might lack today?
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Well, you know, most of the legacy carriers were union people and union people have to be bound by their contract and they can't do anything outside of the written rules for their particular position.
So, you know, you get that stop start thing. It's like, oh, no, I can't do that because XYZ person has to fulfill that, you know, commissary duty or that, you know, mechanical duty or this, that or the other. Not that we did anything in maintenance, but, you know, it was just strictly delineated. Well, we were much more, oh, that needs to be done. Okay. You didn't ask somebody else to do it. If you saw something that needed to be done, you literally just took up whatever tools you needed and you got, got the thing done. So and that's how everybody was working. Because again, you know, we had gone bankrupt. We wouldn't have had a job if we didn't operate that way. And we wound up using approximately 33 people per aircraft to get everything done from the ticketing to baggage to the commissary to inflight, you know, and a typical carrier was over 100 people per aircraft. So considering we did it for a third, that was one of the reasons that we made money. You know, we did it with way less people with this, with this, I gotta jump in here and volunteer, you know, kind of mentality.
That's how we did it.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: How did Cruise then balance rule bound aviation safety with the improvisational personality of this startup that you just described?
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Well, there was never a compromise on safety. And you know, part of Joan's duty as a lead flight attendant and supervisory role is everything had to be done to the nth degree for the faa. Nothing ever was compromised there. That was our first, you know, always in the back of our minds. But we did that without the passengers noticing, you know, that we were, you know, looking at people that might have been suspect. I mean, we had bomb scares on the airplane in the early days when that was, you know, the terror. Terrorizing idea of the day. And, you know, we never let on that we were afraid. We just handled it professionally. And it was like, oh, no, deplane. Okay, faster, faster, deplane. And then finally, the passengers would get off the airplane and. And they wouldn't know what hit him. And it was like, oh, he had a bomb scare, you know, and then, you know, it kind of filter out. But we didn't really let the passengers know that. I don't know if that's really answering your question exactly, but there was never a compromise on safety. And again, if there was some small way we could deliver something, you know, to people, you know, like maybe they were having an anniversary, you know, putting something on the PA about, oh, happy anniversary, and everybody clap for them. It's 50 years, you know, just personalizing the aircraft experience. And we could do that on charters, more than you can on a, you know, a business kind of carrier where nobody really cares about their neighbors so much. You know, they just want to get to their meeting.
I hope that that answered your question, but redirect me if it didn't.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: The story begins for sun country with Braniff's 1982 collapse. For those of you who have built identities around flying, what's that loss feel like?
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Well, that loss, in my own feeling, of course, which is what. What this interview is all about. It's just me. The. The collapse of Braniff was really hard because literally, as an employee, you have access to the world. Well, first of all, Braniff, I was flying out of Boston and, you know, flying to Europe, and that was, you know, it's. It's also always an adventure. But it felt like everything shrank, everything went away with that collapse. It's like, what, I'm back in Minneapolis and no access to the world. You know, flying free, having adventures, and, you know, going out and seeing the world and seeing how other people, you know, live and, you know, dance and eat and, you know, all their cultural norms.
So it felt terrible. The loss was indescribable. Plus, it was a fun job. You know, a lot of my friends had kind of, I would say, boring jobs.
I don't know if they would put it that way, but it was fun. It was. It was. Go see the world, you know, I mean, we all get into jobs for different reasons, but the travel is the.
You Know the openness where you learn and you grow and you, you know, there are sights to see. So it, it felt terrible, not to mention the, you know, that it was our living, you know, so it was hard to. Hard to lose your income.
So the collapse was awful.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: The founding story of sun country has almost a folktale quality. A VFW hall in Bloomington displays brand of cruise, a bar, conversation, the idea of just, what the hell, why don't we just start our own airline?
When you first heard that sun country might actually happen, did it sound possible to you or completely bonkers?
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Well, I would say it was easy to commit to the idea of it because again, we were unemployed. Unemployment is a great motivator to get up and try something new. So really it wasn't a gamble for us since we didn't have any employment. But I would say it felt like a pipe dream to me. It's like really start an airline. Well, okay, I'm game. I don't know what they have in mind, but let's go and try this. And. And the visionary behind that was Jim Olson and he had worked at Braniff behind the scenes. He was a captain at Braniff, but he was this super genius guy who knew how to put trips together to, to have an airplane go out five minutes earlier because down the line it would cost a million dollars less than their fuel burn or, you know, connecting costs, you know, and so he was this guy who, you know, knew how to do flight and crew planning. And so he was the one that had kind of all the background experience to say, this is doable, we can do this. We can start with one little airplane and get this done. And so really without his three dimensional Jenga like thought process, it probably never would have happened. But he put the dream out there and we just all thought, yeah, let's hope it works. And we just dug in and, and literally we set it aside and just did the work.
So doing the work, every year we added an airplane. You know, very slow, steady growth. But it was magic. It was really magic because that was not really a time when airlines were exactly thriving.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: The book repeatedly shows that sun country was born from relationships. Former brand of people, local lawyers, mechanics, family members, old neighbors.
Looking back, Maggie, was the airline really built on shared expertise?
Trust, faith, all the above and more.
What do you think?
[00:14:18] Speaker B: I would say, I think probably the term shared expertise might be stretching the definition of what we had.
Sorry. You know, the pilots, of course, had zillions of hours of training and every year they had recurrent training and the flight attendants, you know, we had our training as well, so there, I guess there's some small level of expertise, but it was literally just, you know, people's particular orientation to maybe somebody was good at math and they could do all the fuel loads and, you know, x keep keep track of all that stuff. Or somebody could do sales and somebody could sew the uniforms and somebody could, you know, do something else. So it was a collective effort and people just found their niche naturally. You know, some people were better, you know, soothing personalities, because of course, this caused. It wasn't contentious, but There were like 11 pilots and two flight attendants that were founders now amongst this group, of course, they've all got egos and, you know, they. They were friends, they weren't business partners.
So believe me, we learned as we went. And I wasn't part of that founders group. I was an original employee, but we learned as we went, and it was like, oh, this guy's great at organizing or this guy's great at hiring. Oh, she really knows how to eyeball, you know, somebody who's going to be really good for the next round of hiring and stuff. So we literally just organically fit into the organization and was a corporate adventure. We had common goals and there was trust in each other, as you said, and faith that we could do it.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: You personally made 32 aprons for the first country flight attendant at the time. Did that feel like a small, practical task or did you understand that you were literally stitching together the identity of a new airline?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Well, it seemed to me I'm practical by nature. And it's like, you know, Joan was. Joan and Judy were the two flight attendants that from Braniff that were founders. And Joan is this super bionic energizer bunny personality that could do, you know, work, you know, on four hours of sleep. Well, not all of us can do that, but she had so much on her plate and so many things that, you know, none of us really would have ever thought of. And one day, you know, I was out at the office and she just said, oh, gosh, we've got to make aprons too, in case this thing's work. This thing works. We hadn't gotten our certification from the FAA yet, and it's like, well, I can make the aprons. And she just kind of looked at me and she. She was rather reluctant to give anything away because, you know, you trust yourself and you don't know if somebody's going to come through for you. And I said, oh, I know how to sew and so I kind of copied an apron that I had used at another airline when I was out east. And, and you know, it was just, it was just a practical thing. It was like, I can do this. And then of course, you know, if we don't work out, okay, we have something to use at the barbecue.
So. But we all did things like that, you know, and, and that's just my little. One of my little things that I could do. And her actual Jim's mother was the one that made the apron. Jim Olson, the visionary. His mother made the fuchsia dresses and then I made the apron. So, you know, but we didn't even know, like I said, if we were going to use them because we weren't sure. You know, we were still in the process of getting all that paperwork done for the FAA in Washington D.C. to SOR.
So, yep, just something that needed to be done. And I don't know, I probably wouldn't have even thought of it, but it was just the minutiae, the millions of things that had to be done to get this airline in the air and operating like a, you know, a certified carrier. It was just kind of mind boggling. But everybody, everybody put forward their best teamwork efforts to get it, get it done.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Alpha Fox, the first sun country aircraft, becomes almost a character onto itself in this book. A Boeing 737, originally built for Braniff, painted for sun country and then welcome home in the Minnesota cold.
What do you remember about seeing a plane and realizing this dream had become physically real?
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Well, you know, Alpha Fox was like getting on that airplane, it was like going home. And of course, we had been bankrupt since May. And so we did a training down in Miami by, by Air Florida at. Because they, their bank and background, they owned the air airplane at that time. And it was, you know, we knew the galleys as flight attendants. We knew the galleys, we knew the entire, you know, aircraft cabin. It was just like, oh yeah, back in my office, you know, and then the guys, of course the cockpit was just the same that they remember. I mean, every, every airline configures things differently, you know, I mean, down to the bathrooms. So it just felt like, you know, there was something, you know, we could have done our work blindfolded, at least from the flight attendants, not probably the pilots. But anyway, we, we just.
It was a brand new airplane. There was no mechanical problems with it because it was brand new. So we really got lucky there. You know, it was like 20 years of service before, you know, it ever started. Well, obviously they had to do, you know, regular maintenance checks and such. But it just was a wonderful airline. No breakdown of equipment and you know, oftentimes when you get an old airplane, you know, you have breakdowns. It's, it's normal. It's you know, just a mechanical piece of equipment. So you know, it was just a huge group of family and friends, you know, working together to, you know, fill the seats and have the passengers enjoy their trip there, actually have fun doing it. And boy, they got off and they, they loved telling us stories about how much money they want in Vegas on the way back home. But most of the airplane was pretty quiet on the way back home. I will say
[00:20:47] Speaker A: the book gives Joan Smith and Judy Peterson enormous importance. Not just flight attendants, but as founders, protectors, trainers, eventually pilot certified women who refused to be treated as lesser co founders. How did women shape some countries founding culture in ways that might be overlooked in a pilot centered aviation history?
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Well, I would just say I, I hate to be redundant here, but Joan Smith was the beating heart of Sun Country's culture. Now Joan Smith was not a person who stood over you and said, do it, do it, do it. She didn't have to. We were all highly motivated employees. But she just, she worked so hard and you would have felt terrible if you would have sat down to watch her. So nobody did. And honestly, when we think of, you know, all the passengers that would become friends of the crew members later, they'd bring us cookies and oh, every once a month, you know, we'd have the same people on board.
They knew us because of Joan's orientation to complete and total care for the passenger. I just can't stress that enough.
It was a glue that sort of bound us up with the passengers. They liked us, we had fun, we had smiles on our faces. You know, we weren't grumpy. So it just, it just was her, her orientation to passenger comfort was wonderful. Judy Peterson's unending humor and buoyancy kept us all light hearted. And her laugh would just kind of echo through the airplane. She was just a joy. Everybody wanted to fly with Judy because she was so fun and so silly and, and the passengers, you know, knew that we knew our stuff too. I mean, you know, we had a lot of medical emergencies on the, especially on the way home from Vegas. When people mistreat themselves, you know, they don't sleep much, they, they're up all night gambling and probably overeating and over drinking and they get, they got on the airplane and I don't know, it seemed like Every time there was a mechanical problem, and, you know, not mechanical, I'm sorry, medical problem.
And, you know, we handled that too, and we were highly trained in that. Over trained by FAA standards. And, you know, it just, like I said with Judy, she would just, you know, we would laugh and, and have fun and yet pay attention to the things that we were really there for. And that was safety. Safety of the passengers.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Flight attendants are often remembered for service, but this book shows them as safety professionals, trainers, schedulers, culture builders, and emotional angers for passengers.
What do you most want readers to understand about the real work of flight attendants?
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Well, a lot of, you know, in the olden days, of course, it was just seemingly much more for show, and it really never was behind the scenes. It was always, always, always, always about safety. That was paramount and doing everything you can in a safe environment and. But yet not making the passengers feel a sense of fear or a sense of dread. There were lots of passengers who would get on and they were afraid to fly. We'd spend time with them, we'd bring them up to the cockpit because oftentimes when you understand how something works and you see the people that are doing the job, you know, you feel more comfortable. There was just a lot of, I'm not going to call it hand holding, but lots of individualized comfort care. And it was the. The real work of a flight attendant is to be observant and to make sure, you know, that. I mean, you know, let's face it, there are lots of hijackings and stuff, and we can't really discuss our security training. But, you know, believe me, everything. When you, when you get on an airplane, everything is taken into account. You're assessing the passengers. Oh, my gosh, is this person going to be okay? Why is that person sweating? Why are they nervous? Why are they this? Why are they that? So that goes on 24 7.
In a flight attendant's mind, they're always thinking of what's happening in the cabin. And if you let people get out of control, you know, it's very contagious.
We were great monitors of that without having people feel scared to fly. You know, they. They never knew that we were even doing that. They were completely comfortable. And of course, you know, with charter, maybe that was easier for us than on a legacy carrier that's carrying all different types of passengers going all different places. You know, we had that background at Braniff, and we brought that with us. Laughing and enjoying their trips.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Dun country survived ownership changes, Northwest pressure, private equity, public ownership. And finally the Allegiant Travel Company officially acquiring Sun Country Airlines on May 13th of this year, 2026.
After living through so many versions of the airline, what do you believe survived from the original sun country and what has inevitably been lost?
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Well, so many times, even in my limited career at Bradiff, which is only about seven and a half years, there were so many things in the air airline industry where I wished I had a crystal ball. Oh, is. Is Braniff in trouble? You know, you'd hear online rumors. Are they in trouble or, you know, what's going on with American? They're really challenging us on these routes and such. And you wanted a crystal ball. You literally wanted to say, well, geez, should I retire here and go to another airline? You just kind of really couldn't do that. Plus, you know, you get. You get a sense of loyalty from a company and a. And they were a very, you know, great carrier. And, you know, a lot of people want to work for Braniff because they were.
I don't know if the right word is upscale, but just different.
Well, all the changes, what survives is to be determined. Sun country, we know that Sun Country's name will disappear, you know, with the Allegiant acquisition, but that probably won't happen right away. It may happen in one to two years. They said they want to keep the airline separate, but what could be lost? Boy, I hope not everything. The Allegiant people thus far have been very open to company culture, and I am not versed in what allegiance company culture is, but they seem very open and positive about growing the company and doing it, you know, serving more outstations, you know, stations where they don't get a lot of service.
So that kind of is really how we started, you know, going out of Sioux Falls, you know, places Bismarck, North Dakota. So it's sort of similar.
So I hope that passenger ethic stays the same.
And we. We have prided ourselves on that. Having that great, loyal passenger base for all these years, we would. Would have been nothing, really, without returning and coming back to sun country and, you know, flying out of the charter terminal was great. Going from point A to point great where they didn't have to stop and spend half their day at a connecting airport. You get on an airplane in the morning and four hours later you're sipping a drink margarita in Mexico, you know, some of those things I hope will be continued at Allegiant. It just again, that. That crystal ball thing, I wish I had a crystal ball to see if it was, you know, what it would be like, I'm sad that our name will disappear and all those efforts. But you know what?
Good for the people that are still there. I'm retired, and hopefully it will be bigger and better and incorporate some of our love for flying and love for the passengers that keep us employed.
So that's what I wish for. My all my friends that are at sun country now, if you could sit
[00:28:52] Speaker A: down with one of the founders or original employees who did not live to see this book published, what would you want to tell them about their story and how it's being remembered now?
[00:29:01] Speaker B: I would really want to tell them.
Honestly, I feel so terrible that we didn't get all the stories. And that's the only problem with a book. You know, do you want an encyclopedia or do you want a book that you know can be published with 250 pages? Because I'm one person, if I tell 10 stories, the other thousand people have another 10 stories each.
So I am very sad that we didn't get the other founders input. That is really sad. But I'm so proud to have been a part of this magical company. There was kismet there, and there was joy and there was going through the ups and downs together.
And literally, if those founders who are now probably having a nice little debrief up in heaven or wherever you think the creator puts us, you know, if. If they knew that their company that they started with nothing, was just taken over by Allegiant for $1.5 billion, they would just be incredulous. Nobody ever would have dreamed that this company would have been sold to Allegiant for $1.5 billion. And I just want to. Every time I see one of the few living founders, I thank them.
And there were a few I got to thank before they passed. And I just had the best career. I just can't imagine having done anything different. You know, it just was a glorious run.
I am very proud to have been part of the company. I'm very glad they hired me.
They didn't have to, but they did. I'm delighted to try to tell just the smallest piece of that great story.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: My last question for you.
If you could fly anywhere today where all expenses were covered for travel, where would you want to go?
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Wow.
I always had Kathmandu High on my list as a young person. That was at Braniff, and I don't think I could take the oxygen deprivation at this point, but I think it would have to be like New Zealand. I've never been to New Zealand, and I just hear so many wonderful things about the north island and the south island and, you know, the geography. I kind of like a geographical setting, you know, where there's not as many mobs of people as in the major cities. I mean, I did all the tourist things in the major cities, but I kind of like a more open landscape. So, yeah, New Zealand, I guess.
Are you going to see if you can arrange a trip for me?
[00:31:49] Speaker A: We'll talk about that after we're done.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll accept.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Maggie Hill, thank you for joining us and helping preserve this remarkable chapter of Minnesota aviation history.
Minnesota's Phoenix from the ashes of Braniff to Southern Country Airlines is more than a company history. It's a story about people who lost one airline, then helped build another through improvisation, loyalty, risk, humor and an extraordinary amount of work.
Maggie, thanks again for sharing your memories, your perspective and sharing the story.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: Yes. And thank you for the opportunity to share these stories. I appreciate it.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: And now this.
