Bankruptcy Court Begins Auction of Pan Am Assets : Transportation: The bids ranged from $67.5 million for most of the carrier's Latin American routes to $6 million for 8 airport slots.

Bankruptcy Court Begins Auction of Pan Am Assets : Transportation: The bids ranged from $67.5 million for most of the carrier’s Latin American routes to $6 million for 8 airport slots.

L.A. Times Archives

Dec. 10, 1991 12 AM PT

From Reuters

NEW YORK —

AMR Corp.’s American Airlines offered $40 million for the biggest part of Pan Am Corp. assets Monday, as a U.S. Bankruptcy Court began auctioning off the remains of the one-time aviation giant.

As lawyers for the now-defunct carrier sought to sell Pan Am’s assets piece by piece, American offered to buy routes to Brazil and Argentina.

Other bids included a $25-million offer from Delta Air Lines Inc. for Pan Am’s route from New York’s Kennedy airport to Mexico City.

USAir Group Inc. also bid $10 million for eight slots at National Airport in Washington and $6 million for eight slots at New York’s LaGuardia.

UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, a top bidder in the morning session, had no immediate bid for the second round.

Earlier in the day, United bid $67.5 million for a package of Pan Am Corp. assets that included much of the airline’s Latin American route system.

Pan Am lawyers, trying to determine which bids were most attractive, stressed that Pan Am would weigh cash offers and commitments to take on its former employees.

Nearly 10,000 people employed by Pan Am lost their jobs last week when Delta Air Lines, which bought most of Pan Am’s European routes earlier this year, said it would no longer pump money into the carrier.

United, which was expected to win the contest for Pan Am’s Latin American route system, in its initial bid offered to give preferential consideration to “a reasonable number” of employees in the Central American operations.

Pan Am’s Latin American system consists of flights from New York and Miami to nine South American cities, six Central American destinations and 14 Caribbean cities, and is expected to generate $1.2 billion in revenue next year.

Also for sale were Pan Am transatlantic routes between Miami and Paris, and Detroit and London’s Gatwick airport.

Delta initially bid $15 million for the New York to Mexico City route.