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Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) was at one time the principal international US-based airline. The Lockerbie disaster in 1988 exacerbated the company's financial problems, which forced it to sell off many of its aircraft (most of which were soon broken apart) and international routes to its competitors. The company finally collapsed in 1991 (operations were ended on December 4). An attempt was made to revive the company in the late 1990s, but the new Pan Am ultimately ended up facing bankruptcy again and the name was sold in 1998. The current owners of the Pan Am brand operate a small number of flights within the continental United States.
History
Pan Am was founded by aviator Juan Terry Trippe in 1927 as a seaplane service from Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba. During the late 1920's and early 1930's, Trippe purchased a number of ailing or defunct airlines in Central and South America. He began air mail flights from Florida to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1930.
During the 1930's, Pan Am began service from the West Coast to Honolulu, and from there to Hong Kong and Auckland.
After World War II, Pan Am lost its distinction as the United States' official international airline (first to American Overseas Airways, and later to TWA and Northwest Orient). With competition on many of its routes, it began investing in new innovations such as jet aircraft (the Boeing 707, which Boeing, under pressure from Pan Am, modified to seat six across instead of five), widebody aircraft (the Boeing 747, for which Pan Am was the launch customer with about 25 orders in 1968), and even supersonic aircraft (as a launch customer for the Concorde and as a potential customer for the abandoned Boeing SST).
In 1962, with traffic increasing, Pan Am commissioned IBM to build PANAMAC, a large computer that booked airline and hotel reservations, and held very large amounts of information about cities, countries, airports, aircraft, hotels, and restaurants. The computer came to occupy the fourth floor of the Pan Am building, which was then under construction in Manhatten and which was to be the largest commercial office building in the world for some time. Pan Am also built Worldport, a terminal at the Kennedy Airport, now the Delta Flight Center, distinguished by its elliptical, four-acre roof, suspended far from the outside columns of the terminal below by 32 sets of steel posts and cables)
In 1980, with airline deregulation well underway, Pan Am, under the direction of Chairman William Seawell (who also sold the Pan Am building), acquired National Airlines in an attempt to build up its U.S. domestic network, after finding large difficulties in getting approval for its domestic routes. A bidding war, however, caused Pan American to pay far more than the actual value of National Airlines. Around this time, Juan Trippe, who had been in retirement for about ten years, died. The airline's rapidly deteriorating financial position led it to sell most of its Pacific routes to United Airlines in 1985. After Pan Am Flight 103 crashed in 1988, the airline finally began to fall apart. Travel agents avoided booking passengers on Pan Am for fear that passengers had begun to associate danger with Pan Am. In March 1991, The airline sold off its profitable London Heathrow routes (arguably Pan Am's biggest international destination), again to United Airlines. In August of that year, Delta Airlines purchased the remaining profitable assets of Pan Am, including its remaining European routes and the JFK WorldPort, and injected some cash into a smaller Pan Am predominately serving the Carribean and Latin America.
Pan Am continued to incur heavy losses and only survived until December 1991, when Delta refused to inject any more cash into the company. The airline's Miami terminal and its Latin American routes were sold to American Airlines.
Pan Am's resurrection
Guilford Transportation Industries purchased the rights to the Pan American brand after the original carrier declared bankruptcy. In 1996, Guilford launched a new Pan Am, with an Airbus A300 called the Clipper Fairwind. The new airline was headed by the last Vice-Chairman and last Operations Officer of Pan Am, Marty Schugrue, who also helped in the creation of the Frequent Flyer system and who served as President of American Airlines. but it only survived for one year before ceasing operations.
In 1998, Pan Am was launched again with a fleet of seven Boeing 727's, flying to nine cities in New England, Florida, and Puerto Rico. Pan Am has cooperative service arrangements with Boston Maine Airways.
Other facts of interest
- Charles Lindbergh was a Pan Am pilot during the 1930's.
- On January 6, 1942 Pan American became the first commercial airline to have a flight that went around the world.
- During the Cold War, Pan Am was the main air link between West Germany and West Berlin.
- The Beatles arrived at Idlewild International Airport in New York aboard a Pan Am DC-8(Clipper Defiance, which was eventually broken apart in Long Beach, California) in 1964.
- The Pan Am Building in Manhattan was the largest commercial office building in the world when constructed in 1963.