Tell about PAN American Airlines ?

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Over the course of its over six decades in operation, Pan American World Airways, Inc. was one of America’s most widely recognized airlines. The firm’s pioneering flights to Europe, Asia, and South America helped earn it an important role in aviation history.

Under the direction of Juan Trippe, the firm encouraged long distance air travel and secured the technology necessary to achieve international flights. At one time, the company moniker was one of the most recognized trademarks in the world, second only to Coca-Cola.

But after eluding total financial ruin several times in the 1970s and 1980s, a combination of bad management, high debt, poor employee relations, and just plain bad luck brought the airline’s demise in December of 1991.

The architect of Pan Am’s prominence, and ironically of its later decline, was a man named Juan Terry Trippe. Upon graduation from Yale in 1920 Trippe worked for a year in his father’s bank. Soon thereafter he left the bank in order to pursue a career in the airline business.

When his father died suddenly, Trippe used his inheritance to purchase nine Navy “Jennys” for a new endeavor, Long Island Airways. Unable to generate enough business, the company failed.

Trippe and two wealthy friends from Yale then organized a second airline after the passage of the Kelly Air Mail Act. Their company, Colonial Air Transport, won the first airmail contract route between New York and Boston.

They purchased two three-engine Fokker airplanes the following year which enabled them to transport passengers as well as mail. A dispute among stockholders soon resulted in the sale of the company to what later became known as American Airlines. Trippe and his partners were excluded from both the decision and their airline.

Undaunted, Trippe’s group purchased Aviation Corporation of the Americas with the intention of bidding on the Key West-Havana mail route. In 1928 the company merged with Pan American Airways and Atlantic, Gulf and Caribbean Airways

The new company retained the Pan American name and instituted the first scheduled international commercial destination, to Havana, Cuba.

Passengers’ often well-founded fears of flying high above 90 miles of open water made it difficult for Pan Am to book all eight seats on each flight. The bravado of the airline’s pilots didn’t help: some were known to enter Cuban bars and dare American tourists to fly back to Florida.

In Miami the company tried a more subtle tack: “Fly with us to Havana, and you can bathe in Bacardi rum four hours from now.” One of Pan Am’s three Fokker airplanes was, in fact, lost in the ocean in 1928. Nonetheless, Pan Am’s embrace of such new technologies as directional radio, navigational instruments, and meteorological measurement helped make long-distance air travel safer and more popular.

Trippe was now planning Pan Am’s expansion in the Caribbean. Due to a lack of airports in the region he supported the development of the water-landing Sikorsky S-38 “flying boat.” Pan Am purchased 25 of the five-ton airplanes, which could travel 100 miles an hour and had a range of 300 miles. In anticipation of the U.S. Postal Service opening several new routes, Trippe had his flying boats make survey flights beyond Cuba over routes that, at his insistence, were to be selected for airmail contracts

He also dispatched advance men to secure landing rights, mail contracts, and other concessions so that when the post office finally invited airmail bids Pan Am would be the preferred choice. In this way the company secured routes to Puerto Rico, Panama, and other points throughout the Caribbean.

In 1930 Postmaster General Walter Brown compelled the merger of Pan Am and its biggest airmail contract competitor, the New York, Rio and Buenos Aires airlines. The union doubled Pan Am’s fleet and earned it the extremely lucrative South American East Coast airmail contract.

These routes served as a springboard for future business and promoted Pan Am to the world’s largest airline and the “chosen instrument” for flying the U.S. flag abroad.

Pan Am’s use of flying boats helped consolidate its coverage of the Caribbean and turned its attention to traversing the oceans. The airline used the newly developed China Clipper (a Martin M-130), with a range of 2500 miles, to transport passengers and mail from California to the Orient.

Overcoming huge obstacles of diplomacy, financing, and engineering, Pan Am established service to Europe in June of 1939 using the larger and faster “Dixie Clipper” aircraft.

Pan Am’s aeronautical pioneering was quite costly. Trippe was said to have been obsessed with the idea of “having a plane in every airport in the world.

This left little money for dividends and, as a result, the stockholders voted to replace him with his old friend and associate “Sonny” Whitney in March of 1939. Whitney, however, was an ineffective manager and proved unable to maintain control of the company. Less than a year later Trippe was asked to return.

As the only established American international airline, Pan Am played a major role in the war effort when it placed itself at the disposal of the U.S. government in the early 1940s. In November of 1940, the company signed a contract with the War Department providing for the construction of airbases and remote supply, radio, and weather stations.

In October of 1942 the airline established a war transport service from the United States across the South Atlantic to West Africa and from there to points in the Middle East. Pan Am was rewarded handsomely for having devoted up to three-quarters of its resources to the armed forces during World War II. When the war ended the company’s hegemony over international air routes was at its peak.

Trippe hoped to maintain the profitable relationship forged during the war between Pan Am and the federal government through the creation of one official airline that would compete with foreign carriers. His proposal that Pan Am be made a regulated monopoly (not unlike utility companies) was rejected by Congress, however.

Furthermore, the government opened the door for the competition Pan Am had never previously experienced. With an eroding market share Pan Am looked to the future, commissioning the development of Boeing’s first jetliner, the 707. The delivery of the first 15 of these airplanes precipitated the jet age and propelled Pan Am once again to an enviable competitive advantage.

In the early 1950s Pan Am expanded its transportation holdings through the acquisition of American Overseas Airlines. The company also diversified into hotels, real estate, and corporate jet aircraft, and contracted with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).