Pan Am
NAME: Pan American Airways
ALTERNATIVE NAME: Pan Am
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 1927-1991
LOCATION: United States
CATEGORY: Airline
FIELD: Commercial aviation
SHORT DESCRIPTION: American airline which pioneered routes to Latin America and eventually operated worldwide
DESCRIPTION:
Pan American Airways (Pan Am) flew its first scheduled flight -- from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba -- on October 19, 1927, in a rented single-engine plane. Set up earlier that year by American businessman <founded by> Trippe*, Pan Am had won the government Post Office contract for the first air mail flights between the United States and Cuba.
Triple-engined <used planes by> Fokker* planes soon replaced the borrowed seaplane and the following year, the first passenger flights began between the U.S. and Cuba. (One of Pan Am's first pilots was the soon-to-be famous American aviator <early pilot was> Lindbergh*.)
A year had not passed before Trippe had won exclusive mail contracts for seven routes to the Caribbean islands and to Central and South America. Pan Am's 11 planes now flew out of Miami, Florida, and Brownsville, Texas, to Panama, Venezuela, Trinidad, Puerto Rico and other islands.
By the end of 1929, Pan American had 12,000 miles of routes, sometimes surveyed in advance of operations by Trippe himself. From 1929 to at least 1931, most landings were done on water and in amphibious planes designed by Russian engineer <used planes by> Sikorsky 2,* who was to develop the helicopter. On occasion, landing rights had to be negotiated when the first plane landed. When planes started landing on the ground, it was Pan Am that had to arrange for landing strips, build some sort of airport, and provide refueling services.
Trippe was anxious to expand the business, but since no plane could carry enough fuel to fly from the U.S. beyond Latin America or Canada, he decided the best way to expand was from the routes already established in the Caribbean. Throughout the 1930s, Pan Am added more and more routes to its airline service, although Trippe swore that Pan Am would not compete with other U.S. domestic airlines once they had established their own routes.
Pan Am's first trans-Pacific commercial flight, from San Francisco to Manila, in the Philippines, took place in 1936. Fueling stops were set up on islands in U.S. possession along the route. Since the Sikorsky planes were not suitable for long flights, Pan Am opted for a new Boeing plane, the China Clipper.
Three years later, in 1939, Pan Am began trans-Atlantic flights from New York City to Lisbon, using Boeing's Yankee Clipper. Before the U.S. entered the Second World War in 1941, the flights provided a vital route for refugees escaping Europe, but only one flight a day was scheduled, and since the plane could carry only 35 passengers, the waiting list was enormous.
In 1941, with the British desperately needing spare parts for planes and tanks in their North African campaign, <ran other airline for> Churchill* urgently requested President <ran other airline for> Franklin D. Roosevelt* to arrange for a civilian airline to fly spare parts to Dakar, Senegal, on Africa's West coast. This gave rise to a new company, Pan American African Airlines. Because of these cargo flights, the U.S. had an airlift capability before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December, 1941. After the U.S. entered the war, Pan Am ran the service for one more year before the military took over.
Another wartime PanAm task was to convert DC-3s supplied by other domestic airlines into cargo planes, and to deliver P40 fighters to the U.S. Air Corps stationed with the British in North Africa. The U.S. government shipped the fighter planes in crates to Accra, Ghana. Pan Am assembled them and ferried them across Africa to Khartoum. In the Pacific, military transport was run by Pan Am on contract with the U.S. navy.
After the War, Pan Am was recognized as the leading international air carrier. In 1947, it made the first round-the-world flight, from New York to New York. In the 1950s, it bought its first jetliner. In 1958, it made the first scheduled jet flight from New York to Paris. In 1966, it flew its first wide-bodied aircraft.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Pan Am suffered a number of financial reverses. In an effort to recoup, it bought the U.S. airline National Airlines in 1980. The purchase gave Pan Am a network of routes along the eastern U.S. seaboard. Assets also included Pan Am Express, with connecting flights in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, and the PanAm shuttle between Boston, New York and Washington.
In 1986, Pan Am sold its Asian and South Pacific routes to United Airlines. In November, 1991, it sold its transatlantic, continental European, Middle Eastern and Asian routes to Delta Air Lines. Still foundering, in December, 1991, it went out of business.
Extra Connections: As part of the 2001 911 attack, Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked and crashed.
ONELINER: PanAm, first American commercial airline
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Kauffman, SB, Pan Am Pioneer, A Manager's Memoir, from Seaplane Clippers to Jumbo Jets, Texas Tech University Press, 1995.