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Published Wednesday, February 15, 2012 in Local

Photo by Jeffrey Leo

Bob Coggin stands in front of the poster that was given to him at his retirement party. Coggin spent 42 years with Delta and retired as executive vice president of marketing.

Honoring a 'Titan': Newnan's Bob Coggin in Travel Hall of Fame

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Newnan Times-Herald

Newnan's Bob Coggin started his career at Delta Air Lines working "on the ramp" at the age of 19.

He quickly rose up the ranks and retired as Delta's executive vice president of marketing. After retirement, Coggin started his own consulting firm. One of his early customers was an upstart website called Priceline.com.

Priceline "had this great vision and great technology on how to help the airlines sell distressed inventory," Coggin said. But "they were not presenting it to the airlines in a way" that grabbed the airlines' interest, he said.

The creator of Priceline came to Coggin after his retirement and asked him to help the company get the airlines on board. Coggin had been instrumental in starting Delta.com,">Delta.com, back in 1997. "The number of seats sold through Delta.com in those days was tiny," Coggin said. "The average person wasn't shopping online like they are today," he said.

Coggin had the idea to offer Delta warrants to buy Priceline stock at a very low price. The idea worked very well.

Coggin also spent several years working for Cendant/ Travel Port, retiring as vice chairman.

Coggin has been recognized for his many accomplishments in the travel industry with induction into the Business Travel Hall of Fame.

The ceremony for the inaugural class of the Business Travel Hall of Fame was in New York City on Dec. 12.

Created by "Business Travel News," the Business Travel Hall of Fame was created "to recognize those executives who blazed trails and shaped what has become today's business travel landscape," according to the hall of fame website.

The inaugural class included nine men, many of them CEOs of airlines or travel companies.

Coggin said the honor was quite a surprise. Two of the honorees were Gordon Bethune, former CEO and chairman of Continental Airlines, and Bob Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines.

"To be included with two people of their caliber and their reputation was humbling," Coggin said. "It was quite an honor. I was flattered, humbled and honored," he said.

In the January issue of "Business Travel News," which carried the story of the Hall of Fame induction, Coggin is refereed to as a "titan;" his work to cap travel agency commissions appears to be legendary.

In the magazine spread, Coggin's claims to fame are listed as "transformation of Delta Air Lines into a global competitor, agency commission cuts."

Back home in Coweta County, however, Coggin is better known as a member of the Newnan City Council.

Coggin got started at Delta because he had an uncle who worked on the ramp. "He kept telling me about what a great job it was," Coggin said. "Back in those days, they paid a pretty good salary... places in Newnan didn't pay very much," he said.

He started there in 1956. A major thing that attracted him was that "there were a lot of young people working there. I was a young single guy. It appeared to be a great place to go," he said.

He was soon promoted, and became a ticket agent in Montgomery. There was a sales agent job in Washington, D.C., that had been open for more than a year "because they couldn't get anybody to move to Washington. I kept pestering the people in Atlanta to give me that job," he said.

It was a good move, too. That's where he met his future wife, Millie, who was the secretary to Delta's vice president of government affairs. They recently celebrated their 50th anniversary.

Coggin wasn't in D.C. long before he was offered the district sales representative job in Jackson, Mississippi. Then, it was district sales manager in Philadelphia.

After about two years in Philadelphia, "I got a call saying they wanted me to go to New York and run the New York operation. Being a good Southern boy, I wasn't too attracted to that job at first. I said no," Coggin said. But after thinking about it, he changed his mind. "I thought, if I go to New York and do a good job, there's no telling where I can go in this company."

Three years later, Delta bought Northeast Airlines. "Overnight, it turned from a medium size operation into a very large operation, he said.

Coggin was in New York for nearly 12 years, when it was back home to Georgia, where he was named regional sales manager.

Coggin said "possibly the biggest surprise I got in my career" was when, less than a year after he was back in Atlanta, "I got a call from our senior vice president of sales and marketing." Someone was retiring and "they said starting Monday, you are the new head of scheduling and planning."

Coggin attributes his success to his "very strong work ethic and a lot of common sense." And, "I took some jobs other people didn't want."

When he was first working on the ramp, loading and unloading planes, they had long stretches between "banks of flights."

"Most of my colleagues would go somewhere and have a cup of coffee or snooze," during those breaks, Coggin said. "I went in operations and learned about operations, rather than taking a break." It wasn't long after that that he was promoted to the job in Montgomery.

As an executive, Coggin said he was always very visible. "A lot of executives get behind their desk and you don't see them or hear them. I was very involved," he said.

"That is kind of what gets people knowing who you are."

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