Twenty years ago today the revolutionary giant, Pan American World Airways, came to the end of its 64 year life. It wasn’t just the demise of any airline, but rather THE premiere airline the world had ever known.
Here’s a collection of assorted links about Pan Am to remind us all of what once was.
Shouldn’t that be “twenty years ago today”?
Math class is tough.
That seemed to coincide with the end of the COLD WAR…..
Logical when considering the long standing incestuous relationship PAN-AM had with the Pentagon and US State Department.
Even prior to Pearl Harbour, Howard Hughes had forged an aliance with the US government as a civilian aviation transport contractor…
Back when flying was actually enjoyable with real food and service (but expensive).
Sasquatch: One reason for Pan Am’s demise was its lack of internal routes. It wasn’t until the late 1970’s the airline could fly within the U.S. That was how Frank Abagnale could fly across the U.S. masquerading as a Pan Am pilot in the film “Catch Me if You Can”. He flew in the jump seat of other airlines so no one knew him. I only flew Pan Am twice – Miami to Nassau return in the late ’60’s.
The actual problem was they went bankrupt because they – get this – “ran out of money.”
They ran out of money because they got in a bidding war (with Frank Lorenzo) over the purchase of National Airlines. That’s where they burned the cash and that’s why they went out of business — when deregulation happened, you just flew where you wanted — you didn’t have to “buy” anything.
The money from the National purchase allowed Lorenzo to go forward and torture millions of other airline passengers and employees at Continental and Eastern — Oh — they went bankrupt also………Eastern never came back.
One of life’ssad moments. Flying intoParis CDG, taxingaround somewhere out in the south 40 and seeing a whole row of Pan-Am 747’s being painted in someone elses colors.
Key lesson: there is no such thing as “too big to fail”.
All things fail eventually. The challenge is to succeed as much as possible between then and now.
Like GM Ford etc, the old players in the market were stuck with legacy costs such as pensions, benefits, and flab from the good old days. I know someone from CP Air who retired 20-30 years ago and still flies all over the world on Air Canada’s dime. I’m not sure he ever worked for Air Canada.
Now all the pilots are 12 year old kids working for not much over the minimum wage. The age is an exaggeration, the low pay is not.
The relevance escapes me, sorry.
The relevance is irrelevant.
You forgot this one, Robert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Q3X5Gw5I4
I did a lot of flying in my corporate working life. Mostly domestic in Canada and occasionally to the US.
Don’t recall ever flying with Pan-Am, but I did once take the helicopter shuttle that landed briefly on the Pan-Am Building in New York city. (and me without a camera)
And yes, I have stayed at a Holiday Inn.
I never flew on Pan Am but I flew to Hawaii in the mid 70’s on Ward Air – the entire plane was first class. It was exciting and it was glamourous, getting there was indeed, half the fun. The food and drinks were top of the line and plentiful – no groping security lumps at the gates, no nasty resentful grumps thumping down the lanes on the plane (Air Canada Union ‘servers’), the stewardess’s and the pilots did everything in their power to make the flight a trip to treasure.
There were no tobacco nazis thumping around, no plastic ticky tacky forks and knives, no saraan wrap around a stingie, stale, cold sandwich, no dried out muffins with one teaspoon of butter, all the coffee was hot and served in porcelin (not paper) cups. The drinks were served in fancy glasses, the ash trays were changed constantly, the washrooms had soap and lotion and were cleaned several times, the stewardesses helped unload the upper racks when we landed and smiled thanking us for flying with Ward Air.
I don’t enjoy air travel very much anymore because it is not designed to be a pleasure, the staff is surly and the airports are cold and not too clean; the food is plastic like the ticky tacky knives and forks. It is all self serve so a person might as well bring their own food from home.
Your links brought back wonderful memories, Kate.
The climate change people, with a few minor adjustments, seem to have copied the Pan Am trademark Blue Globe. I noticed this during a video clip I was watching a couple of weeks ago. The name was different of course, but other than that at first glance one would think it was the Pan Am logo/trademark.
Sasquatch: Howard Hughes had ties to the CIA and PAN-AM was really started by the US Government to combat the NAZI’s state owned airline in South America (Prior to WWII); however unfortunately for your point Hughes had no ties to PAN-AM. The airline Hughes owned was TWA. It was the competition from the Hughes owned TWA after the war that started to really cut into PAN-AM’s business.