Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) Boeing 707

Quite possibly the most famous airline in history, Pan American Airways—also known as Pan American World Airways, PAA or simply Pan Am—had its beginnings in geopolitics. A German owned airline in Colombia had expressed interest in flying to Panama in 1926, raising the specter of a German threat to the Panama Canal. At the time, German financed and owned airlines dominated South America’s airlines, and the United States wanted to change that. In June 1927, Juan Trippe, who already had built small airlines in the Northeast, formed the Aviation Corporation of the Americas, with significant backing from New York businessmen and the US government. ACA bought a small Key West, Florida-based airline that operated a Fairchild FC-2 floatplane, and this was reorganized as Pan American Airways—reflecting Trippe’s vision of a hemisphere-spanning airline. It flew its first air mail flight in October of that year to Havana, Cuba.

 

Trippe then set out to make his dream come true. Passenger service was added between Key West and Havana using land aircraft, and then Pan American began to steadily move south. Several South American airlines were bought out or set up by Pan American, Trippe taking advantage of Charles Lindbergh’s popularity by using the famous aviator to promote the airline. Worried that the US government’s enthusiastic backing of Trippe could lead to Pan American gaining a monopoly of domestic routes, the smaller domestic airlines of the United States secured an agreement that Pan American would limit itself only to international services—an agreement that would come back to haunt Pan American many decades later.

 

Trippe was not overly concerned, as his airline gained de facto control of international routes to the United States. Pan American did operate some land-based aircraft, but its most popular aircraft at the time were its huge seaplanes, aircraft like the Sikorsky S-38 series and eventually the mammoth Boeing 314. Trippe demanded and got highly trained and experienced crews from pilots to mechanics, further building Pan American’s reputation. Nor did he concentrate solely on Latin America: by 1939, Pan American had built an extensive Pacific route network with its flying boats, and was beginning transatlantic service.

 

World War II was a watershed for Pan American. The outbreak of war in the Pacific after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 caught several Clippers in the air; these then had to turn around and fly back to the United States via Africa, and several dozen Pan American employees at Guam and Wake Island were captured by the Japanese. Pan American’s seaplanes were nationalized, and its Boeing 314s were used as executive transports, including by President Franklin Roosevelt—the unofficial beginning of “Air Force One.” Pan American crews continued to fly these routes under military control, gaining extensive experience in long-distance travel that would serve it well once the war ended.

 

When the shooting finally ended in 1945, Trippe did not waste a moment. He retired the surviving seaplanes, guessing correctly that the day of the flying boat was over. The real money was to be made in flying land-based aircraft across the Atlantic to London, and the race was on between British airline companies, Pan American, and Trippe’s biggest rival, Trans-World Airlines, owned by the mercurial Howard Hughes. Though Hughes had a head start, having financed Lockheed to built the pressurized, long-range L-749 Constellation, Trippe undercut him by ordering the same aircraft and getting them into service faster. Trippe also cultivated links with Douglas aircraft, which provided DC-4s and DC-6s to Pan American for its South American routes, slicing travel times in half. To deal with a threat from Northwest Airlines, which had inaugurated an Alaska route to Asia, Trippe partnered with Boeing again to produce the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. Though the 377 was slower than Northwest’s DC-6s and its transpacific route from Hawaii to the Philippines longer, the Stratocruiser was far more luxurious, with a lounge and sleeping compartments that were reminiscent of the Boeing 314 Clippers. Trippe topped out Pan American’s postwar expansion by inaugurating the first scheduled around-the-world flights for an American carrier in 1947. When the airline became officially known as Pan American World Airways in 1950, it was merely acknowledging a fact.

 

Trippe was not alone in reacting in alarm to BOAC’s launch of the first scheduled jet airliner service with deHavilland Comet 1s; once more, a partnership was reached with Boeing, making Pan American the launch customer for the Boeing 707. BOAC had beaten the Americans across the Atlantic with jets, but after the Comet was grounded due to two catastrophic crashes caused by design flaws, Pan American, for all intents and purposes, owned the transatlantic market with its combination of 707s and DC-8s. Before finally retiring from Pan American in 1968, Trippe made one last, huge contribution to air travel: he made his airline the launch customer for the first wide-body airliner, the Boeing 747. The 747 was Boeing’s failed contribution to a very heavy transport for the US Air Force, but Trippe saw potential in tripling the passenger payload of the 707. Moreover, the 747’s “hump”—built so the cockpit would sit above the passenger compartment to allow for more seating—allowed Pan American to reintroduce the lounge to its flights. The 747 joined Pan American in 1970.

 

Trippe’s retirement presaged the decline of Pan American. While the 747 was truly revolutionary, it would be some time before its potential was realized: in 1970, air travel was still seen as more of a luxurious adventure than a routine method of travel. Trippe invested a great deal into the 747, and Pan American would lose money on it until a decade after its first revenue flight. That aside, it certainly did not seem that Pan American was in any sort of trouble: besides the airline itself—the world’s largest by route network—the company owned interests in several dozen airlines around the world and a hotel chain; it pioneered computerized reservation services; it enjoyed a near-monopoly on flights between West Berlin and West Germany, thanks to postwar agreements that prevented West Germany’s flag carrier Lufthansa from flying to Berlin; and it was favored by the US government itself. In many ways, Pan American was the United States’ flag carrier airline, and was treated as such.

 

Nonetheless, by 1980 Pan American was starting to show cracks in its empire. Pan American’s biggest weakness was the fact that it lacked a domestic route network, and was barred from doing so by the agreements made in the 1930s. Pan American could not even fly dedicated transcontinental routes between New York and Los Angeles. The airline saw an opportunity in deregulation to change this, buying out National Airlines in 1980 and gaining control of its extensive routes across the United States; it would also subcontract with several small airlines on the East Coast to provide Pan Am Express services, and attempted to compete with Eastern on the very profitable New York-Washington shuttle service. This came at a price, however: Pan American was now operating nearly every American jet airliner design, with a corresponding increase in maintenance and fuel costs.

 

The airline’s new CEOs—which underwent heavy turnover in the 1980s—did recognize the problem and consolidated where it could, restructuring the airline; the 747s, which had nearly driven Pan American into bankruptcy in the mid-1970s, were now making the profits Trippe had dreamed of. To replace its older 707s and National’s DC-10s, Pan American turned to Airbus, ordering large numbers of A300s and A310s. Further cuts in the fleet and consolidation of aircraft occurred in 1984, when its entire Pacific route network was sold to United, and nearly every service not immediately associated with flying, such as hotels, were also sold off. Nonetheless, Pan American continued to lose money.

 

It was about to get worse. Pan American sold its bread-and-butter New York-Kennedy to London-Heathrow route to United. It had already lost its West Berlin monopoly when Germany reunified in the same year, as Lufthansa was now able to fly to Berlin. When a merger with Northwest failed, Pan American had no choice but to declare bankruptcy in January 1991.

 

It was hoped that the bankruptcy would only be temporary. Delta bought most of Pan American’s assets, though enough was left to keep the latter in business, including transatlantic routes and East Coast services. Pan American tried to go back to its routes, relaunching itself from Miami, but this failed as well—the airline was just too far in debt. Delta was losing money daily on its support of Pan American, and an attempted merger with TWA came to nothing. In December 1991, Pan American was grounded for good, ending the history of arguably the most famous and storied airline in aviation history. At least six attempts have been made to restart Pan American since, but none have succeeded for very long.

 

I thought I had found all of the considerable number of Pan Am aircraft Bary Poletto had in his collection, but this 707 was a surprise. It is in excellent condition. This is Pan Am's best known livery, dating from the 1970s.

 

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