- Pan Am ceased operations over 30 years ago following more than six decades in the business.
- The airline's history began in 1927 with mail service between Key West and Havana, eventually expanding its routes worldwide.
- Despite its eventual downfall due to fuel prices and deregulation, Pan Am's legacy lives on.
It has been over three decades since Pan American World Airways operated its last flight. The carrier, affectionately referred to as "Pan Am," ceased operations 32 years ago, with its final flight taking place on December 4, 1991.
The airline was known to be a leader in technology and innovation, having operated several aircraft types throughout its more than 60-year history. Next month will mark 95 years since it commenced passenger services.
Pan Am's Pacific Clipper Journey in World War 2 ( written 1999):
The 'Round The World Saga of the "Pacific Clipper" by John A. Marshall
December 7, 1941 - January 6, 1942
The first blush of dawn tinged the eastern sky and sent its rosy fingers creeping onto the flight deck of the huge triple-tailed flying boat as she cruised high above the South Pacific. Six days out of her home port of San Francisco, the Boeing 314 was part of Pan American Airways' growing new service that linked the far corners of the Pacific Ocean. With veteran captain Robert Ford in command, the Pacific Clipper, carrying 12 passengers and a crew of ten was just a few hours from landing in the harbor at Auckland, New Zealand.
The calm serenity of the flight deck early on this spring morning was suddenly shattered by the crackling of the radio. Radio Operator John Poindexter clamped the headset to his ears as he deciphered the coded message. His eyes widened as he quickly wrote the characters on the pad in front of him. Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japanese war planes and had suffered heavy losses; the United States was at war. The stunned crew looked at each other as the implications of the message began to dawn. They realized that their route back to California was irrevocably cut, and there was no going back. Ford ordered radio silence, and then posted lookouts in the navigator's blister. Two hours later, the Pacific Clipper touched down smoothly on the waters of Auckland harbor. The odyssey was just beginning.
In a conference announcing the deal, Juan Trippe told the press that the decision to buy Boeing's new jet transport, to be called the 747, was his most exciting experience with Pan American since the airline's beginnings almost four decades earlier.
Everything about the deal was big: Biggest commercial jet plane (680,000 pounds gross weight), biggest commercial aircraft order ($525 million), biggest jet engines (Pratt and Whitney JT9D turbofans putting out 41,000 lbs. thrust each), a predicted passenger seating capacity that would more than double any then-existing jet transport. Trippe was betting on a predicted increase in commercial passenger travel that indicated 70% growth in the coming five years, he told reporters. Cargo versions of the 747 - Pan Am was ordering two in the initial order - would carry 214,000 lbs. of freight.
Juan Trippe's long-held belief that inexpensive air travel for ever-greater numbers of people could make the world a more peaceful place was about to be taken to it's highest expression.
Air Traffic Plans and Publications
Here at Flightradar24 we’re big fans of anything in the sky and that includes astronomical photography, but we were pleasantly surprised when we came across Andrew McCarthy’s photo of the 30 August Super Blue Sturgeon moon. Taken in Arizona southeast of Phoenix, the photo captures not only the moon, but an aircraft passing in front of the moon.
Aircraft had been part of filming the day prior to flight
High-powered lights were placed near the fuselage
The seals on the windows melted and the panes deformed due to the heatIn a newly released special bulletin, the UK’s Air Accident Investigation Branch says that damage to a Titan Airways A321neo’s windows was the result of heat generated by high powered film lamps used during a project the day prior to the incident flight. The high powered lamps led to deformation of the window pane and melting of the window seal. ///
a/c is painted black...
As the trailer tells it, “Sully” goes beyond the flight 1549 accident itself. This is the proverbial “untold story” of everything that happened afterward, and how Sullenberger, the man, endured it. It explores some of the skepticism and second-guessing that dogged the investigation. Did Sullenberger and Skiles do the right thing by aiming for the Hudson? Is it true they could have, or should have, made a U-turn and glided back to La Guardia? Is it true that one of the plane’s engines was still functioning?
Sure, all of that is interesting stuff. To a point. Forgive me, but of all the harrowing things that have happened to planes, pilots, and their passengers over the years, this is the best the movie-makers could come up with? Why don’t we have a John Testrake movie? Why don’t we have a Bernard Dhellemme movie? Who, you ask? John Testrake was the captain of TWA flight 847. In 1985, he and his passengers were hijacked by Hezbollah militants, forced to fly back and forth between Algeria and Beirut, then held captive for two weeks. Captain Dhellemme, like John Testrake before him, was also the central character of one of the most riveting hijackings of all time.
And others too. Chances are you’ve never heard of them — maybe because their planes didn’t come splashing down alongside the world’s media capital.
I can’t help thinking about Al Haynes, the United Airlines captain who, ably assisted by three other pilots, deftly guided his crippled DC-10 to a crash landing in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989. A disintegrated engine fan had bled out all three of the plane’s hydraulics systems, resulting in a total loss of flight controls. Using differential engine power to perform turns, all the while battling uncontrollable pitch oscillations, that Haynes and his crew were able to pull off even a semi-survivable landing (112 people were killed; 184 survived) is about as close to a miracle as you can get.
How about Donald Cameron and Claude Ouimet, the pilots of Air Canada flight 797, who managed — barely — to get their burning DC-9 onto the runway in Cincinnati in 1983? It took so much effort to fly the plane that they passed out from exhaustion after touchdown.
Or consider the predicament facing American Eagle captain Barry Gottshall and first officer Wesley Greene three months earlier. Moments after takeoff from Bangor, Maine, their Embraer regional jet suffered a freak system failure resulting in full and irreversible deflection of the plane’s rudder. Struggling to maintain control, they returned to Bangor under deteriorating weather. Visibility had fallen to a mile, and as the 37-seater approached the threshold, Gottshall had to maintain full aileron deflection — that is, the control wheel turned to the stops and held there — to keep from crashing into the woods. Theirs was pure seat-of-the-pants improv. A fully deflected rudder? There are no checklists, and no procedures, for that one.
Me, I’ll take a daylight ditching in the Hudson over any of those three.
For the record, U.S. Airways 1549 was one of a [half-dozen] of intentional “water landings” involving a commercial airliner in the modern era… ...
It’s really not fair that I can give them a pass for using a 747 in the first place, yet be offended by which variant was depicted. Here I am complaining because they used the wrong kind of the wrong plane.
Still though, if you’re going to show a plane at all, at least show one that actually existed at the time. Not bothering to do so is laziness. The choice of going with a 747 instead of a DC-8 can at least be argued on dramatic grounds. Going with a model that hadn’t been invented yet is simply incoherent.
You mean to tell me that with the millions of dollars lavished on the production of a major film, that Affleck and company couldn’t have gotten hold of an actual, chronologically correct 747 (it would have been the -200 variant) for a couple of simple runway scenes? At least a few 747-200s are still flying, and I’m sure the owners (cargo companies mostly) would have been happy to lease one out for a few days. Dozens more are mothballed in the deserts of California and Arizona, within driving distance of Hollywood, any one of which could have been painted up in the appropriate colors.
Speaking of which…
Earlier on, I was impressed that they got the period livery for British Airways exactly right, including the typeface used in airport signage. There’s also a very quick shot of the tail section of an Iran Air 747. Here too, though you don’t see it for more than a second, the livery is correct.
But then, with Swissair, they blow it. The colors shown, with the black and brown striping and the full red tail, weren’t used until 1980. They’ve got the wrong plane and the wrong paint job.
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