Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and more commonly known as Pan Am, was a major airline in the United States that was the largest international air carrier for much of the 20th century. The first airline to fly worldwide, it pioneered innovations such as jumbo jets and computerized reservation systems, and introduced the first American jetliner, the Boeing 707, in 1958. Until its dissolution on December 4, 1991, Pan Am was, and remains a cultural icon of the 20th century, identified by its blue globe logo ("The Blue Meatball"), the use of the word "Clipper" in its aircraft names and call signs, and the white uniform caps of its pilots.
Founded in 1927 by two U.S. Army Air Corps majors, Pan Am began as a scheduled airmail and passenger service flying between Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba. In the 1930s, under the leadership of American entrepreneur Juan Trippe, the airline purchased a fleet of flying boats and focused its route network on Central and South America, gradually adding transatlantic and transpacific destinations. By the mid-20th century, Pan Am enjoyed a near monopoly on international routes. It led the aircraft industry into the Jet Age by acquiring new jetliners such as the Boeing 707 and Boeing 747. Pan Am's modern fleet allowed it to fly larger numbers of passengers, at a longer range, and with fewer stops than rivals. Its primary hub and flagship terminal was the Worldport at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
During its peak between the late 1950s and early 1970s, Pan Am had an advanced fleet, highly trained staff, and amenities. In 1970, it flew 11 million passengers to 86 countries, with destinations in every continent except Antarctica. In an era dominated by flag carriers that were wholly or majority-owned by governments, Pan Am became the unofficial national carrier of the United States. It was a founding member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global airline industry association.
In the mid-1970s, Pan Am began facing a series of challenges both internal and external, along with rising competition from the deregulation of the American airline industry in 1978. After several attempts at financial restructuring and rebranding throughout the 1980s, Pan Am gradually sold off its assets before declaring bankruptcy in 1991. When it ceased operations, the airline's trademark was the second-most-recognized worldwide. To travelers and many Americans, its closure signified the end of the golden age of air travel. Its brand, iconography, and contributions to the industry remain well known in the 21st century. The airline's name and imagery were purchased in 1998 by railroad holding company Guilford Transportation Industries, which changed its name to Pan Am Systems and adopted Pan Am's logo.
History
Formation
Pan American Airways, Incorporated (PAA) was founded as a shell company on March 14, 1927, by United States Army Air Corps officers Henry "Hap" Arnold, Carl Spaatz, and John Jouett out of concern for the growing influence of the German-owned Colombian air carrier SCADTA, in Central America. Operating in Colombia since 1920, SCADTA lobbied hard for landing rights in the Panama Canal Zone, ostensibly to survey air routes for a connection to the United States, which the Air Corps viewed as a precursor to a possible German aerial threat to the canal. In the spring of 1927, the United States Post Office requested bids on a contract to deliver mail from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, before October 19, 1927. Arnold and Spaatz drew up the prospectus for Pan American after they learned that SCADTA hired a company in Delaware to obtain airmail contracts from the US government.
Also competing for the contract, Juan Trippe formed the Aviation Corporation of the Americas (ACA) on June 2, 1927, with in startup capital and the backing of powerful and politically connected financiers, including Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and W. Averell Harriman. Their operation had the all-important landing rights for Havana, having acquired American International Airways, a small airline established in 1926 by John K. Montgomery and Richard B. Bevier as a seaplane service from Key West to Havana. A third company, Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean Airways, was established on October 11, 1927, by New York City investment banker Richard Hoyt to bid for the contract.
The Postal Service awarded Pan American Airways the US mail delivery contract to Cuba, at the end of the bidding process, but Pan American lacked aircraft and landing rights in Cuba. Just days before the October 19 deadline, the three companies decided to form a partnership. ACA chartered a Fairchild FC-2 floatplane from a small Dominican Republic carrier, West Indian Aerial Express, allowing Pan Am to operate the first flight to Havana on October 19, 1927. The three companies merged on June 23, 1928. Richard Hoyt was named president of the new Aviation Corporation of the Americas, but Trippe and his partners held 40% of the equity, and Whitney was made president. Trippe became operational head of Pan American Airways, the new company's principal operating subsidiary.
The US government approved the original Pan Am's mail delivery contract with little objection, out of fears that SCADTA would have no competition in bidding for routes between Latin America and the United States. The government further helped Pan Am by insulating it from its US competitors, seeing the airline as the "chosen instrument" for US-based international air routes. The airline expanded internationally, benefiting from a virtual monopoly on foreign routes.
Trippe and his associates planned to extend Pan Am's network through all of Central and South America. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Pan Am purchased a number of ailing or defunct airlines in Central and South America and negotiated with postal officials to win most of the government's airmail contracts for the region. In September 1929 Trippe toured Latin America with Charles Lindbergh to negotiate landing rights in a number of countries, including Barranquilla on SCADTA's home turf of Colombia, as well as Maracaibo and Caracas in Venezuela. By the end of the year, Pan Am offered flights along the west coast of South America to Peru. Following government favors for the denial of mail contracts to their competition, a forced merger was created with New York, Rio, and Buenos Aires Line, giving a seaplane route along the east coast of South America to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and westbound to Santiago, Chile. Its Brazilian subsidiary, NYRBA do Brasil, was later renamed Panair do Brasil. Pan Am also partnered with the Grace Shipping Company in 1929 to form Pan American-Grace Airways, better known as Panagra, to gain a foothold in destinations in South America. In the same year, Pan Am acquired a controlling stake in Mexicana de Aviación and took over Mexicana's Ford Trimotor route between Brownsville, Texas, and Mexico City, extending this service to the Yucatan Peninsula to connect with Pan Am's Caribbean route network.
Pan Am's holding company, the Aviation Corporation of the Americas, was one of the most sought-after publicly listed shares on the New York Curb Exchange in 1929, and flurries of speculation surrounded each of its new route awards. In April 1929 Trippe and his associates reached an agreement with United Aircraft and Transport Corporation (UATC) to segregate Pan Am operations to the south of the Mexico–United States border, in exchange for UATC taking a large shareholder stake (UATC was the parent company of what are now Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, and United Airlines). The Aviation Corporation of the Americas changed its name to Pan American Airways Corporation in 1931.
Clipper era
Pan Am started its South American routes with Consolidated Commodores and Sikorsky S-38 flying boats. The S-40, larger than the eight-passenger S-38, began flying for Pan Am in 1931. Carrying the nicknames American Clipper, Southern Clipper, and Caribbean Clipper, they were the first of the series of 28 Clippers that symbolized Pan Am between 1931 and 1946. During this time, Pan Am operated Clipper services to Latin America from the International Pan American Airport at Dinner Key in Miami, Florida.
In 1937 Pan Am turned to Britain and France to begin seaplane service between the United States and Europe. Pan Am reached an agreement with both countries to offer service from Norfolk, Virginia, to Europe via Bermuda and the Azores using the S-42s. A joint service from Port Washington, New York, to Bermuda began in June 1937, with Pan Am using Sikorskys and Imperial Airways using the C-class flying boat RMA Cavalier.
On July 5, 1937, survey flights across the North Atlantic began. Pan Am Clipper III, a Sikorsky S-42, landed at Botwood in the Bay of Exploits in Newfoundland from Port Washington, via Shediac, New Brunswick. The next day Pan Am Clipper III left Botwood for Foynes in County Limerick, Ireland. The same day, a Short Empire C-Class flying boat, the Caledonia, left Foynes for Botwood, and landed July 6, 1937, reaching Montreal on July 8 and New York on July 9.
Trippe decided to start a service from San Francisco to Honolulu and on to Hong Kong and Auckland following steamship routes. After negotiating traffic rights in 1934 to land at Pearl Harbor, Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam, and Manila, Pan Am shipped $500,000 worth of aeronautical equipment and construction crews westward in March 1935 using the S.S. North Haven, a 15,000-ton merchant ship chartered to provision each island that the clippers would stop at on their 4- to 5-day flight. Pan Am ran its first survey flight to Honolulu in April 1935 with a Sikorsky S-42 flying boat. Construction crews, including Bill Mullahey who would later oversee Pan Am's Pacific operations, cleared coral from lagoons, constructed hotels, and installed the radio navigation equipment necessary for the clippers to island hop from Pearl City Seaplane Base, Hawaii, to Asia. The airline won the contract for a San Francisco–Canton mail route later that year and operated its first commercial flight carrying mail and express (no passengers) in a Martin M-130 from Alameda to Manila amid media fanfare on November 22, 1935. The five-leg, flight arrived in Manila on November 29 and returned to San Francisco on December 6, cutting the time between the two cities by the fastest scheduled steamship by over two weeks.Wings Over The Pacific (Both the United States and the Philippine Islands issued special stamps for the two flights.) The first passenger flight left Alameda on October 21, 1936. The fare from San Francisco to Manila or Hong Kong in 1937 was one way () and US$1,710 () round trip.Pan American Airways System U.S. Cy. Passenger Tariff – Pacific, Orient, & Alaska Services Eff. May 1, 1937 This later became known as the Pan Am China Clipper route, from San Francisco, leading to Manila, Hong Kong, Shanghai.
On August 6, 1937, Juan Trippe accepted United States aviation's highest annual prize, the Collier Trophy, on behalf of PAA from President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the company's "establishment of the transpacific airline and the successful execution of extended overwater navigation and the regular operations thereof."
Pan Am also used Boeing 314 flying boats for the Pacific route: in China, passengers could connect to domestic flights on the Pan Am-operated China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) network, co-owned with the Chinese government. Pan Am flew to Singapore for the first time in 1941, starting a semi-monthly service that reduced San Francisco–Singapore travel times from 25 days to six days.