I do know this, I loved flying People Express a few years back. All the employees had a stake in the action. Never figured out why that didn't work. All employees had such a great attitude.
They were a small airline that tried to go head to head against the big airlines at the same airports. American would schedule flights just before and just after People Express flights. Basically they could saturate any market People Express would try to enter. Also due to a lack of a sophisticated reservation system, they had too few seats available for the number of tickets sold. American and other airlines were happy to book them on their flights.