Spotlight on Golden Age Advertising - Pan-American World Airways

1927 First American airline to operate a permanent international air service, First American airline to operate land airplanes over water on a regulary scheduled basis, and First American airline to operate multi-engine aircraft permanently in scheduled service

1927 Service Started: Key West, Havana

1928 First American airline to use radio communications

1928 First American airline to carry emergency lifesaving equipment

1928 First American airline to use multiple flight crews

1928 First American airline to develop an airport and airways traffic control system

1928 First American airline to to order and purchase aircraft built to its own specifications, the Sikorsky S-38

1929 First American airline to to employ cabin attendants and serve meals aloft

1929 First airline to develop and use instrument flight techniques

1929 First American airline to develop a complete aviation weather service

1929 Service Started: Nassau, Port of Spain, Santo Domingo, St.Thomas, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago

1930 First American airline to offer international air express service

1930 Service Started: St. Lucia, Caracas, Maracaibo, Rio de Janeiro

1931 First American airline to develop and operate four engine flying boats

1932 First airline to sell all-expense international air tours

1932 Service Started: Port-Au-Prince

1933 Service Started: Tampa

1934 Service Started: Orlando, Los Angeles

1935 First airline to develop and employ long range weather forecasting

1935 First American airline to install facilities for heating food aboard an aircraft

1935 First airline to operate scheduled transpacific passenger and mail service

1935 Service Started: San Francisco, Honolulu

1937 Service Started: New York, Bermuda, Sao Paulo

1939 First airline to operate scheduled transatlantic passenger and mail service

1940 Service Started: Seattle/Tacoma

1942 First airline to complete a round-the-world flight

1942 First airline to operate international service with all-cargo aircraft

1942 Service Started: Monrovia

1943 Service Started: Dakar

1944 First airline to propose a plan for low cost, mass transportation on a worldwide basis

1945 First airline to use high-speed commercial land planes on a transatlantic route, the Douglas DC-4

1945 Service Started: Philadelphia, London, Shannon

1946 First airline to operate non-stop scheduled service between Miami and New York (National)

1946 First American airline to install GCA, Ground Controlled Approach, in overseas operations

1946 Service Started: Houston, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, Prague

1947 First airline to operate a scheduled round-the-world service

1947 Service Started: Boston, Washington, Istanbul, Karachi

1948 First airline to provide tourist-class service outside the continental US

1949 Pan Am is the launch customer for Boeing's B-377 Stratocruiser

1950 First airline with low-cost day and night coach service on the East Coast (National)

1950 First to enter the Korean airlift

1950 Service Started: Amsterdam, Hamburg, Helsinki, Oslo, Paris,Stockholm

1952 First airline to use aircraft built specifically for tourist-class service in transatlantic service, the Douglas DC-6B

1954 Service Started: Chicago, Detroit, Nuremburg

1955 Pan Am specifies and orders the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8

1958 Pan Am introduces Economy fares

1958 Pan Am's Boeing 707 Clipper America starts the jet age with the first scheduled transatlantic service in American built jets

1958 First airline to operate jets with the continental US (National)

1959 First airline to operate a scheduled round-the-world jet service

1960 Pan Am initiates first Douglas DC-8 jet service

1961 First airline to offer a worldwide marketing service to shippers and importers around the world

1962 First airline to operate 100,000 transatlantic flights

1962 First airline to develop a global computer reservation systems (PANAMAC)

1963 First airline to operate the Boeing 707-321C jet freighter

Few images of the Golden Age of Radio era evoke the visceral feeling of the times than the famous Pan-American World Airways Clippers; the first American airline to demonstrate the world-wide reach of American commercial flight technology. They evoked romance, adventure, and the promise of American success and wealth.

One of Pan Am's Boeing 314 Amphibious Cllippers over The Golden Gate Bridge

During it's heydey, Pan Am had become so ubiquitous as an icon of air travel that the movie '2001' showcased Pan Am as the only likely survivor of air travel competition in the year 2001.

(Click for larger Image)

"The Clipper" was referred to in hundreds of radio shows throughout The Golden Age as a symbol of international reach, intrigue, romance and adventure. As with all other aspects of the imagery that Radio aroused in us, the mere mention of 'The Clipper' evoked an immediate visual--and visceral--image of romantic, adventurous, internation flight.

Pan American World Airways emerged in 1927, the culmination of one man's unique vision, a few single-engine airframes and a single route--Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba. This humble beginning evolved into the airline that both figuratively and literally opened the entire world to commerical, international aviation. Pan Am was responsible for launching more new airframe development, competition and commerce than any other airline in world aviation history. Pan Am pioneered routes across the world's oceans, seas, cultures and continents, ultimately conducting daily flight operations literally circling the globe.

Juan 'Terry' Trippe, Pan Am's founder, embarked on this historic American journey in 1927, with a tenuous contract to deliver mail to Havana, Cuba. Airmail delivery was the life's blood of early aviation and the primary economic driver in the fledgling industry.

Juan Trippe Time Magazine Cover July 1933

Juan Trippe c. 1977

The contract required successful delivery of mail from Key West to Havana by October 19, 1927. Trippe beat the deadline by the skin of his teeth by leasing a single engine Fairchild from Indian Aerial Express of the Dominican Republic for $145.50. Trippe had banked the success of the contract--and his company--on the delivery of three Fokker F-7 tri-motor airframes. The F-7's arrived late, but Pan American World Airways was off to a successful, if not uneventful, start.

However, it was the famous Fokker F-10 Tri-Motor that really got the airline off the ground, with vastly increased range, and demonstrated reliability. Within three years, Pan American World Airways was successfully navigating two continents and The Carribean.

This rapid growth didn't come easy to the young airline, especially the development of the South American routes during which Trippe had to contend with none other than the W.R. Grace, Corporation, an American corporation arguably as powerful as all of the South American governments combined. But young Pan Am negotiated a necessary pact with the devil, spawning Panagra, an amalgam of Pan American World Airways and The Grace Corporation from which Pan American World Airways gained South American routes crucial to it's early sucess, and Grace Corporation fended off competition from Chilean and Peruvian Airline concerns, making Panagra a going concern well into the 60's, at which time they were bought by Braniff.

Pan American World Airways continued to out-negotiate their early competitors throughout Central America and South America, forming alliances along the way with Colombia's Avianca Airliines (the western hemisphere's oldest operating airline, tracing it's foundation to 1919), and eventually acquiring 64% of Avianca's stock.

July 1931 marked the inauguration of Boston-Maine Airways' mail route between Boston, Massachusetts and Halifax, Nova Scotia. This also marked Juan Trippe's first excursion into Atlantic and northern routes, Pan American World Airways having successfully negotiated to be the prime contractor for Boston-Maine. This inspired Trippe to submit feelers to the airframe industry for a "high speed, multi-motor, flying boat having a cruising range of 2500 miles against 30-mile headwinds, and providing accomodations for a crew of four, together with at least 300 pounds of mail". Thus was born the nexus of Triippe's grand plan to conquer The Atlantic.

Pan American Airways Inaugurates Strato-Clipper Service to Rio for 'only $650', from New Yorker Magazine, 1940
(Click for larger Image)

Within three years, Pan American World Airways engineers were gathering all available information on the Tradewinds and climatology throughout the Trans-Pacific region. 1935 marked Pan Am's inauguration of pan-Pacific flight operations and Sikorsky S-42b's became Pan American World Airways' first "Clippers", sporting spacious interiors and 4 powerful, ocean-crossing engines.

But it was the more powerful, streamlined Martin 130's and Boeing 314's that are most long remembered as the 'Pan Am Clippers' of adventure and romance. These were the Clippers of lore that captured the imagination through those Radio shows of the era that referred to them in their stories of adventure and intrigue.

c.1930

Pan Am Ad from December 1944

Pan American World Airways Ad circa 1933
(Click for larger Image)

Norman Rockwell Illustrated ad "Eyes that see around the world"
(Click for larger Image)

Norman Rockwell Illustrated ad "The heart of London"
(Click for larger Image)

Norman Rockwell Illustrated ad "Mechanic John S. Keating"
(Click for larger Image)

Norman Rockwell Illustrated ad "Turkish Coffee Seller"
(Click for larger Image)

Los Angeles by Clipper, c. 1959

Dateline Crossing Certificate, c. 1948
(Click for larger Image)

(Click for larger Image)

(Click for larger Image)

Gone but not forgotten