Behind the scenes: The Rise and Fall of Pan Am.
My latest video chronicles the story of what was once America's flag carrier airline, and an institution in aviation history.
It has become customary to do, on this blog, a companion post to my latest deep-dive video on YouTube. My latest one, “The Rise and Fall of Pan Am,” technically came out Friday (June 21), but I was so tired from it that I took yesterday off—so this post is late. Nevertheless, it’s up on my channel, and has been doing extremely well in terms of views. As usual, I’ve embedded it below. Email or a blog page isn’t the best way to watch it, but it’s here should you like to see it, or bookmark it for later. I’m also aware that I’ve received some new subscribers to this blog as a result of it. Thank you and welcome!
The story of Pan American Airways, a I state at the outset of the video, is far more than the story of just a company, however beloved in its time. It’s really the story of the rise of commercial aviation in America during the 20th century, and how it changed, particularly after deregulation in 1978, into the strange beast we know today. That’s the “fall” part of the story. In case you don’t know, Pan Am went bankrupt in December 1991 after a last-ditch deal with Delta Airlines that might have saved the airline cratered, largely as a result of Delta CEO Ron Allen pulling the plug at the last minute.
But the “rise” part of the story is very important too, and is of a much different character, harking back to the bold and adventurous early years of air travel when Pan Am, under its CEO Juan Trippe, knitted the world together with routes patrolled by the “flying boats” like the Sikorsky S-40 and S-42, and the Boeing 314. I learned a lot about these early aircraft during the making of this video and the intensive research that went into it. Of course, the bridge between “rise” and “fall” in the Pan Am story is the dawn and maturity of the jet age, which Trippe himself basically built with audacious business deals to buy and develop the Boeing 707 and later the Boeing 747. Arguably that last one was a misstep. Trippe’s gargantuan 1965 deal to buy the as-yet unbuilt 747 set Pan Am on the road to its eventual extinction.
