Texas Air announced today that it will buy the troubled People Express Airlines for about a hundred and twenty-five million dollars. The proposed deal would allow most People Express employees to keep their jobs, although the company will eventually lose its identity and become part of Texas Air. Federal officials must approve the merger. Texas Air is also trying to buy Eastern Airlines.


A rally on Wall Street today after six consecutive losing sessions, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up nearly nine points, to close at seventeen sixty-seven point fifty-eight.


What's being called a "Freedom Flight" of seventy former Cuban Political prisoners landed in Miami today to an ecstatic reception by thousands of relatives and well-wishers. The plane also carried forty-one relatives of former prisoners. The flight culminated nearly two years of negotiations with the Castro regime.


Texas Air Corporation today announced that it has agreed to buy People Express Airlines for one hundred twenty-five million dollars in securities. Texas Air already owns Continental Airlines and New York Air. It is in the process of acquiring Eastern Airlines. People Express, one of the first no-frills, low-fare air carriers, has been in financial trouble lately. It was forced to shut down its subsidiary, Frontier Airlines. Texas Air now says it will acquire Frontier's assets as part of its deal with People Express. Joining us now from New York, NPR's business reporter Barbara Mantel.
"Barbara, it is said this is a very attractive low price, this one hundred twenty-five million dollars in securities. Besides that, why does Texas Air want People Express?"
"Well, Frank Lorenzo, who is Chairman of Texas Air, will get airplanes from People Express, which he might need. He will get the lowest cost work-force in the industry at People Express. He will get a new terminal at Newark, New Jersey that People Express is building. He'll get flights to London, and he will get control over competition. People Express competes heavily, especially in the northeast corridor, with Texas Air."
"This issue of competition has been a sticking point before for the Department of Transportation when two airlines wanted to get together. How will Texas Air get around it this time?"
"Well, they might not, Texas Air wanted to acquire East ..., or wants to acquire, Eastern Airline, and the Department of Transportation said, 'No, not unless you sell more landing slots, more slots in the northeast corridor to Pan Am so that we'll have some competition there.' And Texas Air agreed to that just last week. That may happen again here. The Department of Transportation may require that Texas Air sell some slots or some gates to another airline to ensure that there is still competition in the northeast part of the marketplace. But Texas Air has some leverage here with the Department of Transportation because People Express is a failing company. And the Department of Transportation may feel, 'Well, we'll let them buy People Express and keep it running, rather than let it fail and lose all those jobs."
"Mm hm. Now, if the deal is approved by the Department of Transportation, what is it likely to mean for consumers? If there's less competition the fares could possibly go up."
"Well, yes. You would think that when you move from two competitors in a market to just one airliner that prices would just have to go up. But I want you to keep in mind that unrestricted fares of the kind People Express offered, you know, wholesale unrestricted fares, were being eliminated and phased out anyway, because they were not profitable. And the Department of Transportation theory here is that if you allow mergers to take place, or many mergers to take place, you might create more efficiencies and low costs, leading possibly to lower fares. And also the Department of Transportation believes that there's a lot of potential competition in the marketplace. Airlines can move planes around and buy gates, and so that if an airline in a particular market segment was making a lot of money and raising prices excessively, other airlines would move in and prices would be brought down through competition. So that it's a nice theory, the theory of potential competition keeping prices in line, but it's sort of a new idea and it's not clear that that's really the way it would work."
"Thanks." From New York, NPR's Barbara Mantel.


"My audiences have been very devoted over the years throughout the country. And they've expanded and grown and the country audience has been just as kind and as supportive as the folk audience has been."
"I was thinking though, nonetheless, when I put on this album, 'The Last of the True Believers,' especially the title cut, that I heard more country there than I'd perhaps heard before."
"Well, I guess it has ... I've moved in that direction, mainly because I am playing with the band more. My natural roots are there in country and hillbilly music. And so I think that just comes out more when you put the band with it."
"I want to ask you some questions, please, about this album, about the ... not so much what's on the inside right now, but what's on the outside—a picture on the front of you in front of a Woolworth store, someplace, I guess, in Texas or Tennessee, and ..."
"Houston, Texas."
"In Houston, Texas? Is it the Woolworth store that has the hardwood floor still and the parakeets in the back and that sort of thing?"
"Well, this one that we shot this in front of in Houston Texas is one of the largest ones in the country. It's a two-storey and it's got the escalator that does a little pinging noise every couple of minutes. And it takes up a whole city block."
"But, why a cover photo in front of Woolworth's?"
"Well, that comes from the song 'Love at the Five and Dime,' which was a song that Cathy Mattea also cut this year and had my first, you know, top five country hit with. And it deals with the Woolworth store."
"There is, on the cover, you are holding a book, and you can't really see. ... What is the name of the book on the cover you're holding?"
"In the Kindness of Strangers, the latest Tennessee Williams' biography."
"And on the back is Larry McMurtrie's book about a cattle drive around the turn of the century, Lonesome Dove ."
"He's my main prose hero."
"Now, why? Why would you do that? Why would you pose with a book?"
"Well, I have, my audience consists of a lot of young people between the ages of, maybe you know, fourteen and twenty-five. And I read a lot, and I also write short stories and have written a novel. And I just feel like young people are missing out because they don't read books. And any time I have the opportunity to influence the young person to pick up a book and read it, I would try to do that."
"When you hear these lyrics, when the words come to you, are you hearing the stanzas as poetry or as music?"
"Well, I'm hearing them as music. Lyrics usually come to me, and songs come to me as a total picture. And the music and the lyrics come at the same time. Sometimes they shoot me straight up in bed, you know, in the middle of the night. The Wing and the Wheel' is a very special song to me. It's probably my favorite song that I've ever written. And that song was inspired at the Vancouver Folk Festival by two people who are from Managua, Nicaragua. They have a duo call Duo Guar Buranco. And just about four o'clock in the morning, I was sitting in my hotel room and listening to them sing in the room next door, and looking out the window at this little fingernail moon hanging out over the Vancouver Bay, and that song just came flowing, you know, and was inspired by those two people."
"Now, that sounds easy."
"Well, it IS easy. If you listen to yourself and you listen to the inspiration that's bringing on that particular song, it's easy. It's just a matter of getting up and writing it down."
Nancy Griffith, talking with us in WPLN in Nashville. She is continuing her national tour with the Everly Brothers. Her latest album is called "The Last of the True Believers."