The Airline of Firsts

During this month in 1927, the United States Post Office requested bids on a contract to deliver mail from Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba by mid-October. Pan American Airways, Incorporated was founded as a shell company by United States Army Air Corps officers Henry "Hap" Arnold, and Carl Spaatz. They drew up the prospectus for Pan American after they learned that German-owned Colombian air carrier SCADTA, hired a company in Delaware to obtain air mail contracts from the US government. A contract was awarded to a former World War I naval aviator, Juan Trippe, to fly mail between Key West to Havana. The airline’s first passenger service between these cities began the next year.

Pan American World Airways established seventeen firsts in airline travel, including the first transpacific flights (from San Francisco to Manila) in 1936, using the famous China Clipper; the first transatlantic flights from New York City to Lisbon in 1939, aboard the Yankee Clipper; the first round-the-world flights (New York to New York, eastbound) in 1947; the first transatlantic jet service in 1958 with the Boeing 707, and by 1970 the first airline to use the Boeing 747.

In the Jet Age, Pan American, now referred to simply as Pan Am, faced growing challenges as international travel grew and U.S. airlines deregulated in the late 1970s. It competed with airlines expanding into foreign markets from extensive domestic routes by acquiring National Airlines in 1980. It did little to invigorate the airline with Pan Am ending in bankruptcy by the end of 1991.

Read much more about Pan American at these sites: Pan Am or Simple Flying