But Colodny's career plans were earthbound. After Harvard Law School, he planned to join his uncle's law practice in Burlington. The Korean War intervened. Colodny worked in the Office of the Judge Advocate General and, when the war ended, joined the legal staff of the Civil Aeronautics Board where he argued cases involving airline rates and routes.

In 1957 Colodny accepted a job as assistant to the president of Allegheny Airlines, headquartered at Washington's National Airport. By 1973 he was directing the company's marketing as well as its legal affairs from his office in Hangar 12. Colodny's CAB experience paid off as Allegheny bid to acquire new routes and other local carriers. But the litigator also enjoyed his executive responsibilities. He loved people and planes more than the law.

The airline named Colodny president in 1975 and chairman in 1978. USAir showed a profit every year from 1976 to 1988. When he retired in 1991, USAir - Colodny had come up with the new name over dinner and written it on a napkin - had annual revenues of $6.5 billion, employed 45,600 people, and was carrying 60 million passengers a year. "Just think of what this industry has done for the economy of the world," Colodny says. "Think of the experiences people are exposed to."

Now with the Washington office of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, Colodny still scans the skies from his office window. When an airplane passes overhead, he looks and proudly announces, "That's one of ours."