Pan Am Receives Setback in Bankruptcy Court : Airlines: A judge rules that the carrier must pay the owners of planes that it leases or risk losing them. Pan Am will appeal.

Pan Am Corp. suffered a blow in its bankruptcy proceedings when a judge ruled that it must either pay the owners of airplanes it leases or risk losing them.

Pan Am cannot make the $33-million payment that is at issue, but it was seeking Friday to strike deals with companies that lease 34 of its airplanes. That is about a fifth of the fleet, spokesman Jeff Kriendler said.

“We’re confident that we’re going to reach agreements with the lessors on those aircraft we wish to keep in the fleet,” he said.

Kriendler would not say whether that meant Pan Am was ready to relinquish some of the planes. He declined to characterize the severity of the setback.

Pan Am expects to get some much-needed cash from the sale of its London route to United Airlines. However, completion of the transaction is pending negotiations between the United States and Great Britain over landing rights at London’s Heathrow Airport.

The British government has contended that Pan Am’s landing rights are not transferable. U.S. and British negotiators are expected to meet again today in an attempt to negotiate a new treaty, which would also affect the pending sale of Trans World Airline’s London route to American Airlines.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Cornelius Blackshear sided late Thursday with creditors who argued that Pan Am should not be able to keep the airplanes while avoiding payments on the leases.

Blackshear came to the opposite conclusion of a judge in the bankruptcy case of Continental Airlines, who sided with Continental in a ruling under appeal by its creditors.

Both airlines have sought protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, which gives them a reprieve from bills while they attempt to work out a reorganization plan to re-emerge as healthy businesses.

Pan Am said it appealed the decision late Friday. Blackshear’s ruling, if it survives the appeal, would give creditors more power over airlines in bankruptcy.

“It says to Pan Am, ‘If you want to operate, you’ve got to find the money to make these payments. You can’t continue to not make the payments,’ ” said James W. Giddons, an attorney for some Pan Am creditors.

Creditors want more control after watching Eastern Airlines bleed money for months as it struggled in vain to reorganize. Eastern stopped flying earlier this year. But Pan Am predicted that it will be able to work things out with the leasing companies. Kriendler had no immediate information on the status of talks between the parties, however.