before the emergence of revenue management, boac (now british airways) experimented with differentiated fare products by offering capacity controlled "earlybird" discounts to stimulate demand for seats that would otherwise fly empty. taking it a step further, robert crandall, former chairman and ceo of american airlines, pioneered a practice he called yield management, which focused primarily on maximizing revenue through analytics-based inventory control. under crandall's leadership, american continued to invest in yield management's forecasting, inventory control and overbooking capabilities. by the early 1980s, the combination of a mild recession and new competition spawned by airline deregulation act (1978) posed an additional threat. low-cost, low-fare airlines like people express were growing rapidly because of their ability to charge even less than american's super saver fares. after investing millions in the next generation capability which they would call dinamo (dynamic inventory optimization and maintenance optimizer), american announced ultimate super saver fares in 1985 that were priced lower than those of people express. these fares were non-refundable in addition to being advance-purchase restricted and capacity controlled. this yield management system targeted those discounts to only those situations where they had a surplus of empty seats. the system and analysts engaged in continual re-evaluation of the placement of the discounts to maximize their use. over the next year, american's revenue increased 14.5% and its profits were up 47.8%.