Скачать или смотреть Inside the TWA Terminal: How Howard Hughes' Airline Empire Fell from the Sky

Once, an American airline defined what glamour meant for an entire generation. Trans World Airlines wasn't just a carrier—it was a symbol of sophistication, jet-age elegance, and boundless possibility, the airline that movie stars and presidents chose without hesitation. From a forced merger of struggling mail carriers in 1930 Kansas City to transcontinental routes served by gleaming Constellations, TWA grew into an aviation empire built on one seductive promise: flying wasn't just transportation, it was transformation. Under the obsessive genius of Howard Hughes, the company pioneered pressurized cabins, introduced coast-to-coast luxury service, and commissioned Eero Saarinen's soaring concrete masterpiece at JFK—a terminal so beautiful it looked ready to take flight. By the 1960s, TWA embodied the American dream with wings, its red-and-white livery a symbol of style in living rooms and airports worldwide.
But beneath the glamour, the world was changing. As deregulation shattered the cozy economics of aviation and competitors built efficient hub systems, TWA remained paralyzed by Hughes' perfectionism, then distracted by disastrous diversification into hotels and casinos. The company fought back with new aircraft, aggressive marketing, and desperate reinventions—but it could not escape the predatory takeover by Carl Icahn, who stripped assets and loaded the airline with crushing debt. Three bankruptcies in nine years followed. Then came Flight 800—a fireball over Long Island that killed 230 souls and shattered whatever remained of TWA's reputation. In the end, the once-proud empire was absorbed by American Airlines in 2001, its legendary name erased from the skies like it never existed, reduced to fading memories and a hotel in Queens.
In this documentary, we explore the rise of a company that embodied American aviation at its most glamorous, the culture of excellence that made flying an event rather than a commute, and the toxic combination of genius and greed that turned vision into paralysis. More than the story of an airline, this is a cautionary tale about obsession, corporate raiding, and the distance between building something permanent and watching it vanish—told through the empty halls of Saarinen's terminal, once the gateway to the world and now a monument to dreams that flew too close to hubris.