On December 4, 1991 Pan American World Airways closed its doors after 64 years of being one of America’s iconic airlines. Today, only bits and pieces of Pan Am live on, from former staff to the occasional railroad car still painted with the globe. There’s also a division of Pan Am that’s still up and running long after its bankruptcy.
Pan American Airways opened its doors in early 1927 by U.S.Army Air Corps officers Henry Arnold, Carl Spaatz and John Jouett. Its takeoff was only just after two rivals that would become their own icons: Eastern Air Lines and Western Air Express (later, Trans World Airlines).
These airlines were born into an era when flight was on the minds of many and the prospect of covering vast distances beckoned. Pan Am got its start flying mail between Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba before entering into passenger service. The Pan Am Historical Foundation claims that the airline was marking some firsts right from the start like being the first American airline to operate a permanent international air service and the first American airline to operate multi-engine aircraft permanently in scheduled service.
An obituary by the Los Angeles Times details Pan Am’s ascension from there:
During the 1930s, Pan Am launched its famed Clipper service in blue and white planes that were the first to offer regularly scheduled passenger service across the Atlantic and Pacific. The airline hired aviator Charles Lindbergh to scout out some its early international routes.
Pan Am flew Franklin D. Roosevelt to Casablanca in 1943 and acted as the airline of choice for a long list of heads of state and celebrities. Last year the airline carried to United Nations headquarters in New York two kings, 22 presidents, 12 prime ministers, one premier, one vice president and 49 foreign ministers.
The airline introduced many novel concepts that have become industry standards, like first-class sections and in-flight movies. In the 1960s, Pan Am breathed life into Boeing Co.’s 747 program by ordering 25 of the jumbo jets in preparation.
The airline became such a well-known corporate symbol that when Stanley Kubrick’s movie “2001, A Space Odyssey,” was released in 1969, its hero flew to the moon in a spaceship operated by Pan Am.
Unfortunately, the love story of many airlines wouldn’t last forever. First, as Business Insider notes, the Oil Crisis made operating a widebody like the 747 incredibly expensive, and it didn’t help that the sinking economy meant that fewer passengers boarded the planes in the first place. To put it into perspective, between 1969 and 1976 it lost $364 million. And its debt? One billion dollars.
Another hit was the Airline Deregulation Act. In 1978, the Act removed U.S. government controls from airline fares, routes, market entry and more. Airlines were in a free market. Pan Am, like TWA and Eastern, couldn’t keep up. Pan Am sold routes to add to the bottom line, but it still couldn’t beat low demand and even some fears spurring from a bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people.
Pan Am has been gone for over 30 years, but you can still find it here and there. There are the aforementioned railcars and former employees, but there was also a short-run television series and even an experience flight that you could go on to get a taste of what flying used to be.
Amazingly, one division of Pan Am remains operational today. The Pan Am Flight Academy opened in the 1980 in Miami, Florida to train the airline’s pilots. When the airline filed bankruptcy in 1991, the flight academy was allowed to operate independently.
Since then, the Pan Am Flight Academy operates more than 70 simulators and trains pilots on Boeing 707, 737, 747, 767 and 777 aircraft while also training pilots on the Airbus A320. The academy is also notable for catching the person billed as the “20th hijacker” from the September 11, 2001 attacks. Today, the academy is owned by the All Nippon Airways’ holding company.
So while Pan Am itself may be long gone, at least a part of it survives training some of the pilots of the future. There is at least one place where that globe can still be found proudly displayed.
(Update: February 24, 2022: A representative for DMH Americas reached out and pointed out that the information about the current ownership of the academy is outdated:
In June/July 2020 ANA sold Pan Am Flight Academy and it is now owned by two private individuals which currently operate the company and are expanding our locations here in Miami.
It’s awesome to hear the operation is expanding!)