What cause Pan-Am to fail?

[Gianny]

That was the first arline I ever flew. I was just watching THE AVIATOR and didn't know Pan-Am was so big in its beginings.

Any insight will be appreciated.

[New York Yankee]

yeah, that's a good question. but now they're only flies with the boeing 727-200Adv.

[Mike]

Pan Am was for the aviation industry what Coca Cola is for the soft drink industry.

[DarkLite]

Good question! I know that the last day they flew their 747's was when they transported the Gulf War soldiers back to America.

[Cheese Mmmmmmmmmmmm]

It's sad to see how quickly this once proud airline has been forgotten...

Pan American World Airways was THE main airline in international travel from the 1930s till its destruction in 1991. During the course of those six decades, they flew almost every commercial aircraft type you can think of, and pioneered trans-Atlantic as well as routes to the far East with their famous Clipper ships. Pretty much everyone before the 70s/80s looked to PanAm as the definitive airline in the world.


(This is my favorite pic, a Clipper headed for Manila while the Golden Gate Bridge is still under construction. Gives you a good perspective as to how revolutionary PanAm was.)

During the jet age, they were the first with trans-Atlantic jet travel with Boeing 707s, and they also were the lauch customer and first airline to ever fly the 747.

Anyhow, several factors ended up ruining PanAm. The first was airline deregulation in the 1970s, which ended PanAm's virtual stronghold on lucrative trans-Atlantic routes. The high oil prices in the 70s also hurt them financially, forcing them to sell off a lot of their money-making landing slots, gates and such. The nail in the coffin was the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

PanAm might have sold off everything it owned, but it kept its own naming rights. Twice, once right after its collapse and again in the 90s, PanAm flew again only with a handful of planes (727s used in the 90s) that flew domestically and to the Caribbean. The current version of PanAm flys a select few routes up and down the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. as well as to a few islands in the Caribbean.

[nicksanderson]

Didn't Panam have Concordes on order but got bullied into cancelling the orders by the US government in favour of the Boeing project that was then cancelled?

[Cheese Mmmmmmmmmmmm]

^ Yes. Actually a bunch of airlines had Concorde orders... TWA, PanAm, Lufthansa to name a few, (I remember reading somewhere as many as 300 Concordes were planned to be built.) But with the concerns over sonic boom and the oil embargo, all these orders were eventually cancelled.

[nicksanderson]

That would of been amazing - Concordes being an essential part of every flag carriers fleet!

[Nick in Atlanta]

Originally Posted by nicksanderson

Didn't Panam have Concordes on order but got bullied into cancelling the orders by the US government in favour of the Boeing project that was then cancelled?

This sounds very much like a CONSPIRACY theory!! Do you have any facts (reputable newspaper articles) to back it up?

I have heard that the Concorde was Europe's way of showing they weren't lagging behind the US in technology, when the US was developing the lunar space program in the 1960's.

I've also seen pics of a Concorde in Braniff's livery. (A US airline.)

[samsonyuen]

Air Canada too.

[nicksanderson]

Originally Posted by Nick in Atlanta

This sounds very much like a CONSPIRACY theory!! Do you have any facts (reputable newspaper articles) to back it up?

I have heard that the Concorde was Europe's way of showing they weren't lagging behind the US in technology, when the US was developing the lunar space program in the 1960's.

I've also seen pics of a Concorde in Braniff's livery. (A US airline.)

Can only go on the couple of documentaries that I've seen on the discovery channel over here.

Concorde was shafted by a number of problems that happened all at the same time:

1. The fuel crisis
2. General world economic downturn in the 70's

and

The US administration "encouraged" Boeing to produce a rival SST and "encouraged" US carriers to order them, some orders were transferred and some cancelled all together but the end result was that the project ended up trying to cover the cost of development for a run of 150-200 planes over just 14 or 15 (sounds like lots on military projects where the production run is reduced and then the cost per copy ends up really high) - this was clearly impossible and the goverments ended up paying for the planes for BA and AF.

If this was not the case then I apologise but I can only base my opinions on the information put in front of me.

"
I've also seen pics of a Concorde in Braniff's livery. (A US airline.)[/"

I've seen that two but I think it was a publicity stunt that never can to anything (not sure though).

BA also code-shared with a couple of other airlines on Concorde routes and this lead to a Concorde being painted with BA on one side and another airline (Singapore perhaps) on the other.

[nicksanderson]

Strangely a documetary about the Boeing 2707 was just on Disco Wings in the Uk and it reckoned that Kennedy threw a wobbler when PanAm ordered Concordes and rang up the PanAm boss and said "what will make you stop buying European planes" to which he replied "If there was a US SST I'd buy that"

So Kennedy bank-rolled a competition that led to the 2707 but this didn't work (it was too heavy) and ended up being cancelled. But by this time Concorde was also in trouble as there were concerns about profit making and it was banned from flying supersonic over land.

[Nick in Atlanta]

I have'nt seen The Aviator, which is about Howard Hughes who apparently had a lot to do with the creation of TWA. The person who started Pan Am, I believe, back when flying boats or clippers were used was Juan Trippe. He got Pan Am going in the early 1930's, again I believe. Pan Am used the flying boats to get Franklin Roosevelt to the Big 3 summits between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in Tehran, Yalta and somewhere in Morocco, I think.

After the war, Trippe, moved Pan Am over to land planes. Trippe ran the airline for many years, developing a worldwide network of flights.

Jump ahead to the 1980s and Pan Am is struggling. I believe that after deregulation of the airline industry in 1978, Pan Am was caught unprepared. It was primarily an international airline that had very little domestic feed into its international hubs, like New York City and Miami. They did try to set up a domestic feeder system which brought in passegers from inland US cities to NYC and Miami, but it was too late.

[Bitxofo]

Maybe Los Rodeos accident in 1977 in Tenerife, Spain.
Check:
http://www.airdisaster.com/special/special-pa1736.shtml

[Cheese Mmmmmmmmmmmm]

Originally Posted by bitxofo

Maybe Los Rodeos accident in 1977 in Tenerife, Spain.
Check:
http://www.airdisaster.com/special/special-pa1736.shtml

Tenerife was bad, but I don't think it had much to do with the fall of PanAm. It was more the deregulation act, high fuel prices, and Lockerbie finished them off.