Pan Am Has History of Being First : Pioneered Pacific, Atlantic Routes and Led Way in Jet Age
The date was Nov. 22, 1935. Capt. Edward Musick saluted the 125,000 people standing on the shore of San Francisco’s great bay as bands played and ships blew their horns.
The pilot climbed aboard his big Martin flying boat, dubbed the China Clipper, dockhands cast off the lines and the seaplane taxied out into the bay. The China Clipper (so named because it was the airline’s intention to extend its route to China, which it did two years later) rose over the partly finished Golden Gate Bridge and out over the ocean.
It was the first scheduled commercial flight across the Pacific.
By today’s standards, it does not seem impressive: The China Clipper flew at 143 m.p.h. and took six island-hopping days to get to Manila, 8,200 miles away. Actual time in the air was 59 hours, 48 minutes. Today, at speeds above 600 m.p.h., the San Francisco-Manila trip takes about 15 hours.
Plans to Merge
The plane belonged to Pan American Airways (the name was changed to Pan American World Airways in 1950).
Late Wednesday night, after lengthy negotiations in New York, the airline’s parent company tentatively agreed to a deal with Braniff Inc. under which Pan American World Airways would merge with Braniff. But even if that transaction falls through, it seems certain that543580514long remain an independent airline.
The transpacific flight was just one of many Pan Am firsts. Both before and after 1935, Pan Am was a pioneer. In 1927 its Fokker F7 lifted off a dirt runway at Key West, Fla., with a load of mail and flew 90 miles across the Straits of Florida to Havana.
A few months later, on Jan. 16, 1928, passengers were flown on the route, making Pan Am the first U.S. airline to operate a permanent international air service. The fare was $50.
By the end of 1929, two years after its first flight, Pan Am was a major international carrier. It had a 12,000-mile route system linking the United States and 23 Latin American countries. Within another five years, it had a fleet of 85 planes and served more than 100,000 passengers annually over a route system of 32,000 miles.
Advised by Lindbergh
Pan Am was in the forefront across the Atlantic, as well. On May 20, 1939, only 12 years after Charles A. Lindbergh flew his single-engine monoplane from New York to Paris, Pan Am’s Yankee Clipper initiated the first regularly scheduled flights between the United States and Europe. Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle, would serve Pan Am as a technical adviser for more than 45 years.
Pan Am was the first airline to complete a round-the-world flight (1942), the first to operate a scheduled commercial round-the-world flight (1947), and it led U.S. airlines into the jet age.
In 1955 it became the first airline to order U.S. jet transports and in 1958 it was the first to put them into operation on regularly scheduled trans-Atlantic service. Later, Pan Am was the first airline to put Boeing’s giant 747 into service.
Pan Am was the brainchild of Juan Terry Trippe, a World War I aviator turned broker who in 1923 left Wall Street after what he called “the two slowest and dullest years” of his life to go into the infant aviation business.
Trippe guided Pan Am for more than 40 years. Deviating from the philosophies of other chieftains of American industry who preached free enterprise, Trippe sought--but never received--government subsidies for his airline.
Throughout his career, it was his dream to establish Pan Am as America’s “chosen instrument” abroad, the sole U.S. flag carrier to every corner of the globe and the counterpart to the national airlines of other countries that were subsidized. Even though he received no subsidies, by flying to so many places when there was little competition, Trippe developed Pan Am into the world’s premier international carrier.
Joined War Effort
As a result, Pan Am became the unofficial symbol of the United States overseas--as well known as Coca-Cola and Kodak. The sight of the blue-and-white Pan Am insignia reminded globe-trotting Americans of home. The arrival of a Pan Am plane linked many people in remote spots to the rest of the world.
When the United States entered World War II in 1941, Pan Am--like many other Americans--signed up for a tour of duty. It was a tour that lasted until the war ended in 1945, during which time it carried no commercial passengers and assigned virtually all of its resources to the war effort. As the nation’s sole overseas airline, only Pan Am had the trained people, the equipment and the experience to meet the country’s critical international air transport requirements.
During the war years, Pan Am flew more than 90 million miles for the government, carrying high-priority personnel and cargo. It built 50 airports in 15 countries and trained thousands of military pilots, navigators and mechanics.
When the war was over, the troops came home and put back on their civilian clothes. Likewise, the gray camouflage was stripped off the Pan Am clippers that survived the war in usable condition and they were returned to civilian service.
At the same time, Pan Am began to purchase a new and greatly improved fleet and resumed its private mission: bringing air transportation to the average person at affordable prices.
Things became more difficult for Pan Am after the war. International competition from an increasing number of foreign flag carriers began eroding its business. And there was jockeying for business at home as well.
Oil Embargo Hurt
However, for most of the 1960s, Pan Am continued to flourish. It was far ahead of the others in use of jets and continued to hold the bulk of the U.S. overseas passenger trade.
But in 1969, the airline’s fortunes turned bleak. Its fleet had excess passenger capacity and it began to record losses. It was forced to sell some of its intercontinental-range Boeing 707s and to scale the airline back.
Then, just when it looked as if Pan Am was pulling itself out of its problems, the Arab oil embargo of 1973 caused a steep rise in the price of jet fuel, which makes up about 20% of U.S. airlines’ operating costs. To make matters worse, oil cost more in foreign countries than it did domestically and that’s where Pan Am had to do much of its buying.
In 1975, Pan Am sought a government handout on the grounds that the major U.S. international carrier was in serious jeopardy and that most of its competition was coming from airlines owned or heavily subsidized by foreign governments. But the government said, “No.”
In the mid-1970s, the airline restructured, sold more planes and rationalized its route system. The years 1977 and 1978 were profitable again.
Then, in the space of two years, Pan Am suffered two disasters: airline deregulation and its purchase of Florida-based National Airlines.
It was decided during the Carter Administration that the deregulation of 1978 should affect U.S. air service internationally as well as domestically so landing rights in this country were granted to foreign carriers almost for the asking. As a result, the U.S. share of international air traffic sank and the hardest hit was Pan Am.
No Access to Market
Also, other U.S. airlines, sanctioned by the Civil Aeronautics Board and by the President, began to compete successfully with Pan Am on its once-exclusive foreign routes. At the same time, Pan Am could not obtain domestic routes to meet its newest competitors on their home ground. “We were foxed,” one Pan Am official recalled not long ago. “Every time we applied for domestic route authority, we were turned down.”
The other carriers, with their strong domestic route systems, were able to feed passengers into their new foreign routes. But no one was feeding Pan Am.
“The largest travel market in the world is the United States,” the Pan Am official said. “And Pan Am did not have access to that market.”
The merger with National, which took effect Jan. 1, 1980, was supposed to solve many of Pan Am’s problems. Above all, it was to have supplied an instant domestic system to feed Pan Am’s international routes.
But it did not work out that way, and a number of things went wrong from the beginning.
In a bidding war for National, Pan Am ended up paying too much. Its $50-a-share purchase price was nearly twice National’s book value.
National had a limited route structure extending from the West Coast to Florida and from there up the East Coast to Washington and New York. Without routes penetrating the great center of the nation, it did not feed Pan Am’s overseas flights with enough domestic passengers.
Also, integration of the two carriers proved to be very difficult, partly because National flew McDonnell Douglas DC-10s and Pan Am mainly used Boeing 747s, but also because Pan Am did not keep enough of National’s management and staff to run the unfamiliar domestic operation.
As its troubles mounted, Pan Am was forced to sell one valuable asset after another, including its skyscraper in New York and its lucrative Inter-Continental Hotel chain.
Early in 1986, in what seemed to old-timers like a betrayal of its proud history, Pan Am sold its Pacific division to United Airlines. From the great day in 1935 when Pan Am pioneered air travel across the Pacific, it had come full circle.
