My father retired from Pan Am in 1977 as Chief Pilot. He flew as a captain for 36 years, and on the 747 since its introduction. I was fortunate to make two of his last flights to Rome before his retirement. I sat in the cockpit for takeoffs and landings and was treated like royalty by the flight crew. I'm 72 now, but will always have proud memories of my pilot Pop.
If it was a flight right before his father’s retirement, doesn’t that put his age more in adult range than a little kid though? Btw, great story. Thank you for sharing.
siralan - I had not heard about the incident to which you refer. I wasn't allowed near the controls, but sat in the "jump seat" located just to the rear of the captains seat.
Too much shit going on, too much wasted talent, not enough realism. Kate/Colette were the best. Ricci was great, but not well cast. And the plots weren't very good
My dad retired from Pan Am after 32 years of service. I remember as a kid the trips we took, always on Pan Am, except when we had to visit family in Ohio because Pan Am had no domestic routes. There was nothing like flying Pan Am in those days. Since Dad already had almost 20 years of service when Pan Am started flying the 747 we always flew first class. It was amazing, especially for a kid like me. I literally broke down in tears when I read that Pan Am had folded. No airline could, or ever will be able to match the service of Pan Am and their flight crews.
I had a ticket on Pan Am in September 1989 from Chicago to Frankfurt. When I showed up at O'Hare on the appointed day, there was no one in line at the ticket counter. Turns out that in the months since I had bought my ticket, Pan Am had reduced its schedule, and no longer flew the route from ORD to FRA! (Because I had bought the ticket through a consolidator, word of the change hadn't reached me.) They put me on a plane to JFK the next day, and from there I got on a Pan Am 747 to Frankfurt, arriving one day late. Despite having a cheap ticket, when I boarded at JFK I found that I had been upgraded, and got to sit "upstairs" in business class! Luxury!
I flew Pan Am, first class, on my honeymoon trip to the Caribbean. Since then I have flown all over the world many times. The best flight I ever had was that Pan Am trip.
These videos are very informative and they honestly give me good topics when I don't know what else to say in a conversation. For example, I've brought up Nestle so many times to people since learning what all they make lol.
The number one mistake was selling the pacific routes to United Airlines. UA had two daily flights between NYC and Tokyo. The second flight was a reconfigured 747-400 that was almost all premium seats. They served champagne out of a keg. It was rumored that the flight made $500k every time it took flight. It was always full. But Pan Am had terribly excessive business practices. My mom(who worked for them as a Stewardess) told me they had so much expense on catering, free pens and flashlights. She never had to carry her suit case because the porter would bring it to the door, the uniforms were measured and tailored individually, and instead of all riding a crew bus to the hotel, they were each given individual hired cars. And this is the late 70’s/early 80’s. And that Park Avenue building....oh where do we start. Did you know the former president of Pan Am’s daughter became the queen of Jordan?
I'd like to see you make a video predicting who you think are the companies that won't be around 5-10 years from now. Businesses beyond the obvious like a Kmart which already has one foot in the grave.
DirtCrak it will be interesting to see what happens with Comcast cable business as we go towards streaming. 5g should eliminate the need to be tethered to them.
You forgot about the worst aircraft accident in history when a KLM 747 collided into an innocent Pan Am 747 in March 1977 on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands killing 584 people.
The relationship with Delta was a puzzler. Some people will say that Delta promised things and reneged, just in order to get the pacific routes, iirc. Others will say that they just bought the part. What would have happened if it had been a true merger and it had survived?
Meeker Extreme As a kid I flew on Northwest Orient 727's a few times. I was traveling alone and I remember the cabin crew taking me for frozen yogurt during a layover. I also got to visit the flight deck during and after the flight. Air travel was a lot different then.
Back in the mid 70's, I remember myself and my whole family sending off my grandma at the then Manila International Airport for her 747 Pan Am flight to the U.S. I remember her looking like Imelda Marcos. Back then people really dressed up for their flights. I also remember how amazed I was as a small child being so close to the behemoth Pan Am 747. That scene is still very vivid in my mind. I will be forever an aviation fan.
My first airline flight was in 1970 on a Pan Am 707 from San Francisco - Honolulu - Tokyo. The Stewardess, who was my mother’s friend, gave my sister and I wings and during the flight, took us to the flight deck to meet the pilot, co-pilot and engineer. We where given all the ice cream and Coke we wanted. I remember how bright the lights were in Tokyo after the black of the Pacific.
The mere Memory of Pan Am stirs up the joys of flying abroad, possibly the BEST Airline in the heyday of 60'70' then along comes 'Mr Cheapskate' and he and his fellows are served by what I call 'Mickey Mouse' Airlines, usually run by Accountants, who's objective is 'Saving the company' money' . The attitude and expectations of today's people is very poor indeed, they want a free ride almost and then they complain about the food, the service, the seats, well guess what....You get exactly what you pay for. Pan Am went, as did a few other great airlines. Now you are stuck with 'Cattle Air Inc'.,
Ah, I remember passenger flights before deregulation. The comfort, services and amenities made flying a joy. I still have some airline cutlery from my collection. (I used to pinch a piece from each flight with meal service) The only people I remember consistently complaining on flights were non-smokers, because the air could get a bit thick.
I was on a PanAm flight back when I was 2 in 1987. I, obviously, don't remember anything about it but, my mother says that I enjoyed visiting the cockpit and getting a pair of pilot wings.
At 5:07 you can see three engines on the Boeing 747. This is unusual as usually there are 2 engines on each wing. The inner most engine is actually being transported to another plane with a broken engine , as at the time that was the quickest way to do it. The more you know!
Still happens to this day. Here's an article about Qantas doing it in 2016: www.flightradar24.com/blog/how-qantas-ferried-an-engine-on-the-wing-of-a-747/
I was born in Scotland in 1984, quickly finding my love of commercial aviation at a very young age. Pan Am was everywhere, on our TV screens, billboards in cities and I was incredibly lucky to see one of their iconic Jumbo Jets roar into the sky at London Heathrow as a child. I was in awe of them! I knew then that I was to aspire to growing up into a job in commercial aviation! Then Lockerbie changed everything, not only did it expose the fact that Pan Am was not conducting the correct baggage reconciliation procedures, which if done properly, would have resulted in that bag not being loaded onto the flight as there was no ticketed passenger to accompany it, leaving that bag to explode in a baggage area at Heathrow. Now airline security is what it is today, brought about by Lockerbie and the various horrendous acts of crime and terror that followed, most notably, the terrible and unforgettable acts on September the 11th of 2001. I became a Flight Attendant in 2008 at the age of 24, having found that the costs of becoming a commercial airline pilot were just unjustifiable. I had the smarts but I didn’t have the funds! I’d have been paying for my tuition for the rest of my life! But the ridiculous costs involved with aviation are absolutely destructive to any airline company nowadays, the main reason why we will never see the quality in service of the 1950’s to the 1970’s on long haul trips ever again! Which is a shame indeed! I started my flying career for the “Pan Am” of the UK, Virgin Atlantic Airways and I was a career Flight Attendant for them for 10 years, and what fun I had. I left in 2017 when crazily rising costs and a joint ownership deal came into place that began destroying the family feel and Cabin service of the airline. On the day I handed back my uniform, walking outside and seeing one of our jets roaring into the sky, I cried, knowing that I had made the right decision but having never wanted to leave in the first place. Fast forward 8 months and I am now flying for another carrier and I have regained my love of the job at heart again. I have never liked goodbyes and I have never believed in looking back, I find that counterproductive. But I do fondly remember, Pan Am is a memory that took me to where I am today. And that “Ladies and Gentlemen” is worth its weight in gold! Happy travels to you all!
I hate to tell you, but that baggage practice has never been fixed. We missed a flight in Jan 2020 to Las Vegas from DFW and yet our bags flew. American Airlines returned them the next day, but they allowed 2 suitcases to fly that had no passenger to go with them.
I think you forgot one big thing about deregulation. Before deregulation, Pan Am wasn’t allowed to fly domestic flights (except to Hawaii and Alaska), while almost every other US airline wasn’t allowed to fly international flights. But after deregulation, the rest of the US airlines were allowed to fly international; but, the other US carriers were afraid that Pan Am would use its clout to effectively take over the domestic market. So, the other carriers successfully lobbied congress to heavily restrict Pan Am in the domestic market while allowing the other airlines to launch international flights with little to no regulation. So after a few years, Pan Am decided to acquire a domestic airline, so they tried to buy National Airlines; but they ended up getting into a bidding war with another airline that no longer exists, and they ended up paying way more for National than it was actually worth. And on top of that, it became readily apparent afterwards that National didn’t have enough traffic at Pan Am’s main international hubs in New York, LA, San Francisco, and Miami to feed a sufficient amount of traffic into Pan Am’s international flights. But they ended up paying so much for National that they couldn’t afford to fix the situation. And on top of all that, along with the disasters you mentioned, along with them being involved in the Tenerife Airport disaster just before deregulation in 1977, and also having another major accident in New Orleans and a separate terrorist incident within a few months of each other in 1982 during that rough merger period didn’t do them any favors either.
Yea i have read that PAN AM lobbied the US government to establish themselves the 'chosen instrument' for international flights. TWA fought hard to keep its transatlantic routes, while American Overseas sold off their transpacific rights to Pan AM.
Yea i have read that PAN AM lobbied the US government to establish themselves the 'chosen instrument' for international flights post WWII. TWA fought hard to keep its transatlantic routes, while American Overseas sold off their transpacific rights to Pan AM.
Look what happened as a result, Many 'Mickey Mouse' airlines arose and were to fall, maintenance was a forgotten word, numerous crashes caused by poor inadequate Navigational equipment, Radar and allied NDB'S not to mention the state of American Air Traffic Control with its low staff to task ratios, poor pay and the massive increase in Air Traffic. US Government of the day was in a daze obviously, distracted by its Vietnam Debacle which cost America thousands of good men and women.
anwalborn:you're correct regarding the 'other airlines' however, Pan Am Worked for the position they held, whilst the 'new comers', i.e Mickey Mouse cheap and nasty airlines, 'take a box to sit on' have had everything given on a plate which certain governments regard as being Fair Go.Juan Trippe wouldn't believe what's happened.
One major thing you forgot to touch on was the profound effect that political bias had on Pan Am's performance during the regulation era. Under Johnson and Nixon's administration, Continental, United, American Airlines, TWA, and Delta were granted permission to operate both domestic AND international routes by the Civil Aeronautics Board, whereas Pan Am was restricted to flying ONLY internationally. By the time the deregulation act had been passed in 1978, Pan Am was far more strategically disadvantaged than other major competitors because it had no domestic presence or hub-and-spoke system to speak of.
Very true! Pan Am was America's "flag carrier" while TWA was an "also ran" across the Atlantic with a domestic route structure. The others didn't really have any international destinations (except Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean) until after deregulation and Pan Am's sale of routes. American, United, Eastern, and the like fed Pan Am. The only domestic routes I remember were JFK/LAX, MIA, SFO, and ORD. There might have been more but not substantial nor systematic.
Since I was born in 1970 and flew frequently, I’m very familiar with Pan Am & flew with them at least a dozen times. In my opinion, your Analysis is pretty much spot-on. Pan Am simply imploded due death of a thousand cuts. Pity since they were a magnificent airline.
I talked to a delta flight attendant who used to work for pan am. We talked for about 30 minutes in the air, and it was one of the most interesting conversation i have had with a flight attendant. She had told me that her time with pan am was one of the best she had experienced as a flight attendant. She said pan am existed in a time where people took pride in air travel. People would dress in their best suits when they flew. She looked out in the cabin as she was telling me about how people now just wear shorts and flip flops when they fly. She talked about the in-flight service and how meals would be served and how comfortable passengers were. I do wish that air travel would go back to what it used to be.
Those were the times air travel was special. Ppl who flew felt special abt themselves. Air travel is nothing special. It is just commute from here to there. To be honest, air travel still is overpriced and overglam. Need to get it cheaper and normalised. If I can wear shorts in bus or train then why not flight.
My brother and sister in law flew for PanAm (he a pilot and she a flight attendant). The day they stopped service, he was on his way to L.A. from Chicago - they completed the flight because they were past the halfway point. Some planes were actually turned around mid-flight and told to return. When they got to LAX they were told where to park the plane .... and find their own way home. Other airlines took pity on the stranded flight crews and flew them home free of charge. My sister in law draws no money (she fully retired before they stopped operation) because, as they were going in the hopper, they took money from the flight attendant retirement fund to try and stay afloat. So, she flew for over 20 years and doesn't get a dime. He was able to get a job flying local puddle jumpers and the occasional cargo flight to South America. His first flight in one of the small planes after leaving PanAm, he called the tower with "South Western 708 heavy ready for take off." The tower called back, "Heavy? you're kidding, right?" He had been flying 747's for PanAm and used "heavy" just out of habit.
Yeah same here I know what Pan Am is, flew on them and used to have the Pan Am plane models you would get FREE from the pilot along with wings. I remember getting to visit many cockpits of Pan Am planes. Service was always top notch. It sure beats flying now on "budget" airlines but they are not really a budget once you pay for bags, seats with room and get a drink or snack...LOL Too many trailer trash folks flying today.
I joined Eastern Airlines back in 1967 and was very well aware of Pan Am. I use to fly on the a lot on passes we would get from them and part of our travel agreements. They were a great airline and has a lot of class ! Something the airlines don't have today ! Eastern finally went bankrupt in 1991, then PA followed. Back then flying was pure pleasure !
@nature2rule the passengers are class-less, rude and demanding. I was a child when all these people smoked but we were fed and had room in the seat, never got sick. I get nasal problems after being stuffed in these cattle cars today with screaming children(real terrorists) kicking the seat, running up and down the aisle plus throwing things at other passengers while their adult does nothing to contol or correct that behavior. And everybody is allergic to everything, damn whiny asses. And I'm not even going to start on the behavior of TSA to passengers.
Back in 1964. I flew from New York City to New York City on Pan Am 1. We flew on a company "pass" so the "around the world" trip for two only cost us $2800.00. The early "Clippers" (flying boats) had all been retired but so the radio call signs for all of the Pan Am flights was "ClipperJet+(flight number). We were able to lay-over in various cities for a day or two, get back on the flight and fly to the next city on our itinerary. PA-1 flew NYC to NYC, going Westbound and PA-2 flew going Eastbound. I'll leave it up to your imagination what my new bride and I did in every time zone on PA-1.
Very interesting and pretty spot-on, except for the omission of PanAm's purchase of National Airlines which PanAm grossly overpaid for. At the time, there were international-only airlines like PanAm, TWA, and Northwest Orient and domestic-only airlines like United, American, and Delta. Under deregulation, the only way for an airline like PanAm to break into the domestic market was to purchase an existing airline, like National. On the surface, this made sense as National's domestic routes could feed PanAm's international ones. But a bidding war ensued which PanAm eventually won, but at such a high price that it never made its cost back. Selling its trans-Pacific routes to United in order concentrate on trans-Atlantic was the wrong idea at the wrong time. In the 80's, Asia was starting to boom. It wasn't Chernobyl, but European airline deregulation that started a trans-Atlantic airfare price war at that time, something PanAm, with all its legacy costs, was unable to handle. Still it's worth remembering that it was PanAm's Juan Tripp who convinced Boeing to build the 747.
Exactly, it was the fact they had to endure a bidding war to acquire National and then within a few months the airline deregulation act came meaning Pan Am paid a fortune for a partially compatible fleet when it could have hung on and used it's money to launch it's own domestic network. It's worth noting that Pan Am and Trippe had a habit of rubbing the government up the wrong way and it is said that the ADA was a way at getting back at Pan Am.
Hey Company Man, you forgot to mentioned 'The Coup of the Decade' in 1980 when Pan Am took over National Airlines in response to the Airline Deregulation Act. Not only it was the greatest merger blunder of all time, it was the beginning of liquidating their signature assets including the famous (or infamous) Pan Am building (now acquired by Met Life). It also didn't help there were numerous corporate clashes. Unfortunately, yes, Pan Am was responsible for this terrible business decision.
So that's what happened to the Pan Am building. I hadn't been to NYC midtown in years and when I returned I was surprised to see that it was the MetLife building.
Wait, they did transpacific flights before transatlantic? I would have thought that transatlantic flights would have higher demand and fewer obstacles, making them more appealing.
Garry Sanderson Yeah but a trans Atlantic flight connects the worlds largest economy to the home of western civilisation. Islands in the middle of the Pacific aren't exactly in high demand.
I'm 62, so I remember Traveling on Pan Am. In the film "2001, a Space Odyssey", you had the company running a space shuttle, called "The Space Clipper". It was hard to imagine when the film came out, that in the actual year 2001, Pan Am would be no more.
PanAm's Round-the-World-in-80-Days ticket launched my love of Asia in 1980. Flight 2 747's from JFK, SF, Guam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, overland to Bangkok, then Delhi, Karachi, Frankfurt. 727's to Berlin, Munich. London reluctantly returned to New York. All on standby, great service. Opened up the world to me, it was a magic carpet.
You also forgot the of Tenerife in 1977 that also did alot of damage to their reputation as it was and remains to this day the deadliest plane crash in history with 585 people dead on both planes.
Prior to the Pan Am round-the-world tickets, BOAC offered something similar in the 1960s. You could buy a RTW ticket on BOAC, get on the system at any point, and fly to the next point and disembarkThen, get back on the plane days (or weeks) later, and continue to the next point on the route. I think there was a 1 year time limit to travel, but it made it possible to see the world over 1 year for a total air fare of $750. That was the bargain of the century.
Michael Bordan Cool! My uncle worked at the PanAm WorldPort at JFK Airport and used to do maintenance on Flights 001 and 002. He would tell me the passengers used to always debark the planes with smiles on their faces.
I’m kinda surprised that you didn’t bring up how a railroad company bought the name and branding rights of Pan Am and now operates in their name. Where I used to live I saw locomotives and box cars they owned go by all the time with the big Pan Am logo on the side. Did a double take the first time I saw one cuz I thought Pan Am was gone for decades lol.
I noticed that too, but actually, he didn't say that. He said they operated the first "commercially successful" jets. The Comet had square windows in which the corners developed cracks and caused the planes to break up. The 707 had rounded corners and was a success.
Thomas Kossatz although they did quickly discover the fault and correct it, these failures slowed down production and delivery of the comet, which allowed the 707 to become the overall defacto design for long haul passenger jets...
Okay, here is why I got it wrong: Usually the USA has developed everything, including the intenet* and the telephone** and tend to "forget" other countries. So I was suspicious that it happened again :) *) No, it wasn't al Gore :) **) Johann Philipp Reis did not only invent the first working telephone, he even invented the name telephone :)
The TU104 Camel was at one time the only Jet airliner in service ANYWHERE when the DH Comet was pulled from service. So the Tu104 was the most successful Jet airliner for a short time.
This guy didn't mention the Tenarife airport crash in 1977 that also didn't help Pan Am....two 747's were in the wrong place....at the wrong time because of a bomb.The Pan Am 747 wasn't actually at fault...the other pilot was in a big hurry to get under way,when intense fog and understaffed control tower techs also contributed to this disaster. And to this day is still the worse airplane disasters in the world.....over 560 people died in the two planes when the KLM Dutch pilot failed to wait for takeoff clearance .He topped off his fuel that overloaded the jet ....while at full power...tried to fly over the Pan Am 747....slammed into it when it was still taxiing into position to turn off the main runway.Only 61 people survived out of 622 souls...only on the Pan Am jet.
@Matthew Sullins Ironic how you two are droning on about this guy not doing research when you clearly didn't do enough of that on the Tenerife disaster and didn't know that it was NOT Pam Am's fault, it was the KLM pilot's fault for taking off without proper ATC clearance, in massively thick fog. Not helping is the fact that Tenerife didn't have any ground radar and the fact that the two 747s were diverted there because of a terrorist bomb at their actual destination.
Pan Am was America's flagship airline! They should have been supported and kept going. Could you see France allowing Air France to go under, or Japan throwing away Japan Airlines? Never happen! But America's beaucratic imbeciles in Washington stood by and allowed Pan American to go under because they hated Juan Trippe. Stupid!
Sorry for late response, been busy with finals. Their headquarters building has become a local landmark. A TWA rocket from a Disney park is even perched on top. Out near the airport there are a selection of old office buildings from the 70s when TWA was going to construct its world hub. When it was constructed, they changed plans and wanted the city to rebuild it. The city refused and TWA moved to St. Louis and left KC with one of the weirdest airports on the planet, comprised of three concrete horseshoe shapes.
United & American Airlines survived under the same circumstances. Why did some airlines survive and other faIL? I’m thinking that Pan Am (and the others that didn’t survive) had to have made relatively poorer decisions.
Great review. I feel you missed an opportunity during the 'glory-days' recap section. Pan-Am was so big, that the commercial flight to the space station in '2001 a Space Odyssey' was a Pan-Am flight. :-D
I wasn't sure so I checked. Indeed Pan Am flew me and my fellow soilders out of Saudi Arabia after Desert Storm/Shield. The state tried to help them out I guess.
The fact that the plane was previously used to transport military troops is sometimes the source of traces of gun powder residue found in the wreckage of plane crashes. There have been instances, like AA flight 587 over Long Island, where it caused confusion and delay in assigning the cause of the crash to mechanical failure or pilot error due to investigators attempting to chase down evidence of a bomb blast or rocket strike.
Even the A380 is having a big down turn because the hub and spoke model is getting used less and less often. Is a lot easier to offer direct flights to smaller cities with a EFTOPS twin jet that doesn't take a ton of passengers to fill. There's a reason both the 777 and 787 aren't on the same scale. The 747-8 was a revamped version, but it didn't sell well, the passenger version sold nearly half as many as the freight version and A380 had quite a few cancelled orders. There've been 1,536 747s built so far, and the A380's never going to get near that number. I don't think we'll see a lot of large planes in the future.
Well I don't see the comparison.. The 747 has been the biggest success for Boeing ..hardly a failure..yeah it's fading away because the planes are getting old and technology has moved on
My family always traveled on Pan Am to Italy every year during the mid to late 70's and all the the way to the shutdown, and it was one of the best airlines ever. God I miss the old 747's of Pan Am
Good ole Toshiba. 1. Retail... Toshiba selling computers. For quite the amount of time Toshiba sold computers; specifically laptops. For some unknown reason they sold the laptops at two to three times LESS than what it cost to produce them. Imagine buying an ultrabook, with 4k screen, graphics card to handle that 4k and then some, one of the highest end ssd's in the market, and to top it all off - an Intel i7. Then sell it at a price of what a moderate Intel i3 laptop should go for. What could possibly go wrong? 2. Toshiba energy... How many billions could one lose per week? Just ask those Westinghouse employees - now employed by Toshiba. Not to worry though, there are quite the number of departments at Toshiba that are run exactly like Enron
My mother worked for Pan Am at Heathrow in the 70s and 80s. I worked one summer for them around the check-ins shifting bags and pushing wheelchairs, many celebrities up to the clipper lounge...specifically remember Elizabeth Taylor. As staff family we flew many times with them across the Atlantic and a couple of times out to Hawaii. Used to buy MCOs (Miscellaneous Charges Order) to allow upgrades and travelled a number of times First Class and enjoyed the upstairs lounge on the 747-100s. Remember coming back from Hawaii to LA and almost all disembarked in SanFrancisco leaving us to enjoy First by ourselves for the short flight down the coast. Many happy memories and very proud to in some small way be associated with it. Incidentally the name and logo was resurrected a few times and I remember seeing a few Pan Am planes at Sanford Airport in Orlando in the 2000s.
The Pan Am Museum is located at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on the 3rd floor. The Museum is in Garden City, Long Island, New York. Thank you for asking.
I know it's not a big deal but nobody was flying to anywhere near Chernobyl even before the accident since it was in Soviet control at not a lot of Americans.
People knew about a nuclear accident happening before The Soviet Union admitted to Chernobyl simply because of an unexpected jump in radiation all over Europe. I'm sure a lot of people decided to avoid the radiated parts - and all of Europe, just to be safe.
It was more that the Chernobyl accident decreased commercial demand for Europe travel. Yes it was in the Soviet Union, but there was a fear (a very legitimate one) that the radioactive fallout from the plant would spread all over Europe. Being anywhere close to that fallout zone, even as far as West Germany, Italy, or Sweden, seemed like a bad idea.
I was a Pan Am Pilot from 1966 until 1986 when I went to United with the Pacific Sale. There are Reasons and Excuses for our demise. Frankly, this presentation presents a lot of excuses as reasons. As others have mentioned, all airlines faced most of the difficulties that Pan Am faced. When Juan Trippe left us, he was replaced by Professional Managers who did not have Trippe's knowledge of aviation or fire for pioneering. As an example, for a period, Pan Am had a policy of discontinuing flights that had a Load Factor (enough seats sold to meet the direct cost of the flight.) Sounds reasonable enough, but they didn't consider the fact that they were not reducing fixed overhead. Consequently, the Break Even load factor continued to increase, more flights were cancelled, on and on. As a graphic example, one of the Pilots furloughed by reductions, went around the corner, hired on as Management, and became President! There are lots of reasons......... Mr. Trippe was perfectly willing to go around Bureaucrats to get things done- we had enemies in DC. With Congress, Delta had the Georgia Delegation, American had Texas......... we had New York????????? Enough Said! We spent a lot of money to buy National just before Deregulation- and, if we didn't Fail Deregulation, we got a D- !
I did one of my Masters degree term papers on Pan Am. You hit the high notes but one. The acquisition on National airlines was a half- billion dollar boondoggle that they never recovered from. The fleet was in compatible as were the employees. It is a long story in itself but it suffices to say that they never recovered.
Henry Rieken: Right. PanAm had so concentrated on their international flights, they hardly had a domestic network; deregulation had caught them with their pants down (so to speak). The acquisition of National Airlines was their attempt to quickly build a domestic network in order to compete with the well-established domestic carriers. I was on one of National's last flights (DCA-TPA) and, ironically, one of PanAm's last flights (Freeport, Grand Bahamas - MIA). I agree with maxsmodels that PanAm's decision to acquire National Airlines was fatal.
i concur National Airlines did em in, everyone else who was in business back then is still doing bullishness now. major carriers that is and they had to deal with the same stuff and they also had planes fall out of the sky.
I remember Chernobyl and it was indeed terrifying to people who didn't even live anywhere near Ukraine. People all over the world were afraid that it would result in an apocalyptic nuclear event for the whole world somehow. But it didn't. Did you know that the elephant's foot is still burning? It will remain radioactive for the next 100,000 years. I also quite clearly remember flight 103. At the time it created a lot of panic about flying because it was such a horrific disaster. Never mind the near constant Gaddafi stuff in the news all the time and had been for years. There's a reason why Libyan terrorists were used as a plutonium plot device in Back to the Future. It was something that was immediately recognizable to even kids back in the 80s. Gaddafi took responsibility for the attack but always maintained he didn't order it. Who knows. I think a lot of people never believed him regardless. There were always other theories about who was responsible. I was about 8 when flight 103 happened. But I had already seen the Challenger disaster as well. It was a really interesting (and frightening) time to be a child. So many things happened in a short amount of time. I guess the same can be said of any era. But I think it's a bit different when you grow up during that stuff.
By the way, the first Pan Am flight, which was a foreign air mail route, was not even flown by a Pan Am aircraft or pilot. Pan Am was planning to run their operation out of Key West but the runway was so rough they could not operate their aircraft. A transient biplane (which happened to be a floatplane) was on its way to be delivered to the Dominican Republic when it stopped in Key West for refueling. They paid the pilot to run the first airmail flight to Cuba and back to Key West before the deadline to maintain the contract expired. The pilot then flew the aircraft to its new owner in the Dominican Republic and in to obscurity.
According to the Pan Am Historical Foundation, he's right. The Fokker F-VII couldn't fly out of Key West in time for the mail delivery to Cuba. So, a floatplane that was being ferried to Santo Domingo by a different company did it: "a (chartered) Pan American Airways aircraft, flown by Cy Caldwell (a Canadian citizen) operated Pan Am’s very first flight"
I was so interested in the your video i actually ask my grandfather if he flew in one of those. He said that his first ever flight was with Pam Am in 1967 from Puerto Rico to New York. I showed the video to him and he remembered the interior and the engines, pretty cool. Thanks man, great video.
yeah, they could. with good enough communication and education, they could have been able to tell people "hey, we know you are scared to go to europe but its perfectly fine. just as beautiful as always". for terrorist attacks, they could have increased security and comunicate it. the elimination of the flight regulation couldn't have been something that popped up on the news one day; they should have known before hand that competition was coming their way. the only thing they really could handle was the war and the increased price of gas. so for the most part, them going bankrupt was entirely their fault.
Shortly after Pan Am sold its routes to United, I flew on a Pan Am plane (there was a white dot on the tail covering the Pan Am logo) to Hong Kong. The plane was the exact opposite of what was depicted in the the historical photographs in your presentation. I was in "first class" (in quotation marks due to the awful condition of the cabin). Some overhead bins were secured with duct tape. The interior was filthy. Many seats did not recline properly. The United personnel explained that they had just gotten the aircraft and this was its condition AFTER United cleaned it up a bit. Clearly, Pan Am had stopped maintaining its fleet long before it sold off the Pacific routes. Many years before, I had flown on Pan Am. It was an entirely different experience (of course, so was Eastern, Northeast, TWA, American, United and Delta). That was then and this is now. I remember lounges, bars and roasts carved on a trolly in the ample aisle. Ahh, what was will never be again.
A big part of Pan Am's troubles was that they kind of over-ordered 747s, so they were less efficient on a lot of routes than the later, ETOPS-certified airplanes and since they were big, they couldn't service a lot of smaller international destinations, instead making people fly to a big hub and then take a second flight instead of going direct. Plus they had put themselves under strain to finance them in the first place. It didn't help that the fleet they got from National Airlines was incompatible aircraft, so they had increased costs from running a growing number of aircraft types.
Zzyzx Wolfe I dont think this is applicable for PanAm. When Pan Am went under, 99% of international travel was on 747s. The twin engine international market pretty much didnt exist.
A310s were replacing 747s on a lot of international routes in the early/mid '80s. Pan Am didn't fold until '91. They were also more modern and fuel efficient than the 747.
Zzyzx Wolfe That is simply not true at any scale in the early 80s. I travelled in the 80s extensively and whether you went to Narita or Singapore or London, the moment you reached the international terminal it was wall to wall 747s. In fact I cant think of any other aircraft I flew internationally other than a few on the cross atlantic with the 757s. That was it. Now my perspective is an American international traveller so all international flights were long haul (pacific or atlantic)
He could have younger fans I found this channel because I was looking up what happen to Yahoo and AOL and a few other companies I grew up just too take a look and found this place. I say the way he talks business he's aiming more for college students, and if colleges are teaching students in business what OPEC is then there not doing a very good job.
My first flight was on pan am. It really doesn't compare to flying today. Back then, it was as if the entire cabin was operated as just first class. I remember the flight attendant holding my little brother so my mom could sleep! Quite a different experience.
Oh yeah ! Woolworths. I totally forgot about that store. Wow! When I was a child, it was a big Saturday event to go downtown to Woolworths and shop for crap and then have a ice cream float there afterwards. What did they even sell? Was it clothes? School supplies? I can't remember their claim to fame.
bcubed72 Actually, you can’t really blame KLM. An unholy concoction of events happened on that day. The terrorist incident at Gran Canaria caused the airport at Tenerife to be congested. They had to designate the main runway as a taxiway as the main taxiway was being used to refuel other planes. Not to mention, Tenerife didn’t have a ground radar and conditions were so foggy, ATC couldn’t see the PanAm and the KLM flight. Then there was miscommunication between ATC and PanAm. PanAm was taxiing down the runway to get into takeoff position at the other end, and the KLM flight was taking off. Sad day for aviation.
Peter Laing KLM took off without clearance from the tower. KLM pilot (company's CHIEF pilot, BTW) was rushing due to duty time limitations. Co-pilot actually overrode HIS BOSS once, but lacked the stones to do so twice. Pretty clear assignation of blame: KLM pilot took off without clearance to do so, and collided with another airplane. The terrorist threat, the fog, and the duty time limits were all secondary, contributing factors. It was from this accident that we got "legal to start, legal to finish" regs: weather can't make a shift "illegal." Because of this accident.
It's true there were many factors to blame with Tenerife. Ultimately Van Zanten took off without clearance, but it is important to consider the conditions and circumstances on the day. An ATC service that was stretched to full capacity and which had a limited to poor grasp of English, the lack of ground radar at Los Rodeos, and the ambiguity of the tower's transmissions. Given the obviously poor weather conditions, I do think that the tower could have taken more care to ensure that the runway was clear, and given much clearer instructions.
You missed a number of important points. Pan Am refused to "comp" American politicians when other carries did. Pam Am was then penalized by legislation which prevented them from offering domestic flights, then a growing market. Pan Am would be charged high landing fees at foreign airports when carriers from those countries paid a pittance to land at US airports. Pan Am could only land in Gatwick, London instead of Heathrow. This discrimination happened in many locations while foreign carriers were allowed to land at prime locations such as JFK (then Idlewild) in NYC. These (and other) "quirks" that were imposed on the airline industry over the years, made it MUCH more difficult for American carriers such as Pan Am to stay competitive in a changing world market.
I flew Pan Am back in '79 to England and back then it was an experience to fly. Nothing like the flying bus system it is today. Back then, people still dressed to travel. Men wore jackets and women wore dresses. Food was an experience and every thing more formal and proper. That's how I remember it anyways.
You definitely went way too easy on them. Except for the bombing and hijacking all of the airlines that survived had to deal with all of the same problems Pan Am did, and many of them had to deal with bombings, crashes, and hijackings.
This. A huge part of successfully managing a business is being able to deal with changes in the market and adapting. Obviously management during those last 20 years were not very on the ball. Every failed business out there has plenty of external excuses for it's failure, but the buck always stops with management.
The video fails to mention how Pan Am was set up of for failure by the regulatory body of the era. It was the only major US airline that wasn't allowed to fly any domestic routes. By the time deregulation was passed, Pan Am was far more strategically disadvantaged than other major airlines because 1) it had no domestic presence at all, and 2) it had no hub-and-spoke system
Bought out and/or merged doesn't mean they didn't survive, it means they did what they needed to do to keep operating. Only Pan Am, Eastern, and Braniff outright folded, Braniff in 1982 and Eastern 10 months before PanAm in 1991. Delta, American, and United are still flying under their own name. The rest merged with or consolidated with the remaining big three at one point or another, some of which are still flying under their own name. But all but one of the 7 major US carriers survived intact as stand alone carriers for ten years after Pan Am went under.
I worked for Pan Am for 14 years in London until 1982 when I moved to the US. Pan Am applied many times to operate domestically within the United States but were never granted the approval to do so and were purely an international carrier. I forget which year but they did manage to buy National Airlines, based in Florida which added a few domestic routes, mainly up and down the east coast. It wasn't enough to help. Very sad they are gone.
No actually, as someone who never heard of the TV show I would be absolutely positively happy to hear you fully review the tv series and each episode individually.
Agreed! I think I commented in another video that he'd be an excellent uni or college professor! Though he sounds young, so if he's as attractive as he is talented, he *might* become the fancy of many students 😅 (I'm not flirting with ya, Mike! Just stating what I feel is the obvious!)
"They haven't existed since 1991" Oh, the irony. They were featured as a commercial space clipper in "2001 a Space Odyssey". I guess Stanley Kubrick wishes he had used Boeing instead :P
Right, but they stick around while the people that buy from them come and go. In 1968, when the film was made, you could make the audience believe that in the year 2001 companies would be manufacturing and running business under a parent corporation's name.
+Star Gazer I hate quoting myself, but see above "Right, but they stick around while the people that buy from them come and go. In 1968, when the film was made, you could make the audience believe that in the year 2001 companies would be manufacturing and running business under a parent corporation's name."
PanAm was a wonderful airline and was used by me to visit home everytime went home on leave from Germany. I even flew PanAm a week after the Lockerbie bombing from Germany to LA. PanAm was also my first flight in 72 from California to Hawaii. I was 4.
To summarize for you if the video was never made, it was in an alliance with Renault at the time, and relied on them heavily to survive. then Renault got a new CEO who promptly cut off all support to AMC, resulting in them going up for sale not long after.
When I was 6 or 7 (around 1989-1990), my family took a trip to Hong Kong, and flew Pan Am. I remember the coach section being on par with what you might find on a standard international flight these days, but the first class & business sections were a different story. You passed business class as you made your way to the coach section, and it seemed much like what you might expect from first class these days. To get to First Class, there was a spiral staircase that took you to a second floor, which was also where the cockpit was. Being 6 or 7 years old, and also it being before Sept 11, 2001, I was able to take a quick tour of the cockpit, mid-flight. I wasn't up there long, but I remember it being a wide open space with large easy chair style seats, each seat separated by about 3 or 4 feet. I also remember one of the first class passengers eating a full lobster.
Unfortunately, in 1988, when the Libyan (forgive my poor spelling), terrorists attacked Pan Am flight 103, Pan Am played a massive role in deliberately avoiding the proper security regimen, which at the time was called, baggage reconciliation, had they held up they're part, that bomb never would have transferred planes in that suitcase, and that tragedy never would have happened, although I am a Pan Am lover, those greedy idiots that owned the airline at the time helped ruin that company. Juan Tripp would never have stood for that.
You really do not understand the circumstances of operating an international airline at that time. Maybe take a moment to listen to those of us who lived it. Things were very different then, foreign governments dictated terms of how their airports operated. Could security have been better, absolutely? The world was a very different place. The tragedy of PA103 is much more involved than baggage reconciliation, though that did play a role. It does a disservice to all those who worked for Pan Am to be called "greedy idiots" when the situation was much more complicated than you have referenced in a short paragraph. There were more players involved in this terrorist attack on an American flag carrier. There are many deserving of blame for this horrible tragedy.
Linda Freire Well I'm sorry you feel that way, I'm honestly referring to the words my dear friends used, who's daughter was on Pan Am 103, Theo. Thanks for your concern
While I certainly understand the feelings of one who lost a child onboard PA103, I too lost dear friends on PA103. The explanation is just not faceted as some want it to be. Even to this day, there is great anger, and unfortunately somewhat understandable, to Pan Am for the terrorist attack on the 103. Victims and victim families need to blame someone, something for a loss as horrific as a child. I was at the terminal that night. I saw the faces of the parents upon learning of the loss of their children. I felt their gut-wrenching pain. I also remember being in Lockerbie and tending to the needs of the many victim families. Many years of investigations have ensued but no one can or ever will be able to take away the pain from the parents of those who lost their children. All this does not mean the blame for PA103 was squarely due to Pan Am. That explanation is much too simplistic given what we know today. Pan Am was a great airline. Thanks for your reply.
toni paola Incredible MisInformation! PanAm was the first International carrier to Push thier Own Alert increased Security system that was multi pronged but met w/resistance not acceptance. Most Governments control airports and PAA lobbied hard spending millions if not more to gain acceptance of the system wordwide. Sadly it took 9/11 for them to be implimented- better late than never.im shocked at comments from ppl not in the place to know?
I checked this out because I remember my country's airline Nigerian Airways originated from BOAC. They sold most of their shares to their respective commonwealth countries and kept the British part as British Airways, due to the fact that the UK could no longer maintain a global empire after WW2.
They did, it’s just that Pan Am, being the biggest, suffered the most due to their operating costs. So while all airlines suffered they suffered the most, then Air travel was deregulated, which hit them the hardest. It was essentially just too much repeated bad luck in a row to recover from.
I wouldn't say it hit them the hardest. There are other airlines that went out of business quicker after deregulation. Braniff for instance went out of business very quickly after deregulation. They couldn't adapt at all. They had the high cost structure and I don't think they had the reputation for service, either.
Pan Am played a hand in the development of the 747 and was thus the first airline to order it in bulk. They were projecting a net increase in passenger air travel, but it just so happened that the oil embargo was placed right around the time they decided to introduce these massive, gas-guzzling jumbos to their fleet. It was all just very poor timing.
Actually, a fact which has been missed in this video is, that Pan Am bought a lot of 747s, when they were the almost the sole international carrier of the US. After the deregulation, Pan Am was not allowed to fly domestic, while other airlines were let fly international. That meant a huge disadvantage for them, since everybody preferred to make the whole journey with one airline, but with Pan Am, they couldn't book international-domestic connections. Therefore, passenger numbers has fallen and the big 747s were flown empty. They bought National airline at a very high price to have domestic flying rights as well, but Pan Am and National were very different, which caused a lot of losses as well.