Ex-Flying Tiger head Wayne Hoffman dies

LOS ANGELES -- Wayne M. Hoffman, the retired chairman of Tiger International, the Los Angeles-based parent company of the Flying Tiger Line, which was once the world's largest air cargo carrier, has died. He was 89.

Hoffman died March 31 of natural causes at his home in Indian Wells, southeast of Palm Springs, said Nissen Davis, a family friend.

A former railroad attorney who rose to become executive vice president of the New York Central Railroad, he was recruited to become chairman of Flying Tiger in 1967.

The airline was founded in 1945 by Robert W. Prescott and other former American Volunteer Group fighter pilots, who gained World War II renown as the Flying Tigers. The Flying Tigers first saw combat on Dec. 20, 1941, after the U.S. entered the war.

Although primarily devoted to cargo, the Flying Tiger Line also had contract operations with the U.S. military.

"Hoffman brought transportation management knowledge to Flying Tigers," said Joseph Healy, a former executive vice president and chief operating officer of the company.

Through Hoffman's leadership, Healy said: "We became a well-managed airline. We weren't self-sustaining in freight until Hoffman came, and we started to grow at 25 percent a year in freight. Freight became the cornerstone revenue producer of the airline under Wayne Hoffman's direction."

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Between 1968 and 1978, "the airline grew from about $76 million gross revenue to a half billion," Healy said.

Once described in The New York Times as blunt and informal, Hoffman co-founded the holding company Tiger International Inc. in 1970.

"He wanted a multimodal transportation organization, not just an airline," said Davis, former vice president for public relations for Flying Tiger Line. "He also wanted them to go into trucking, rail transportation and other facets of the cargo industry." Tiger International grew to $2.5 billion in revenue, Davis said. But, according to a 1985 Los Angeles Times article, its fortunes began to slide in the early '80s because of a recession and rising fuel prices and interest rates.

Hoffman retired as chairman in 1986 and then was a consultant for Tiger International, which Federal Express bought in 1989.

Born in Chicago on March 9, 1923, Hoffman attended the University of Illinois before serving in the Army during World War II. He was a second lieutenant when he landed at Normandy on D-Day with the 1st Infantry Division. By war's end, he had risen to the rank of captain and had received a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.

After earning his law degree from the University of Illinois in 1947, he worked in the legal department of the Illinois Central Railroad for four years. He then joined the legal department of the New York Central in Chicago and became assistant to the president of the railroad in 1958.