CELEBRATING SIX DECADES OF PAN AMERICAN WORLD AIRWAYS, JUAN TRIPPE, AND HIS COMPANY'S LEGENDARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO COMMERCIAL AVIATION.
Pan Am Historical Foundation
Supporting Pan Am's heritage since 1992, through projects and work with cultural enterprises around the world.
• PanAm.org history website & Clipper Hall digital library exhibits • The "Clipper" newsletters • Historical installations • Abrams-Banning research grant • Annual Pan Am wall calendar • Historic film preservation •
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EXPLORE
THE ERAS OF PAN AM
TAKE-OFF
At the height of the "Roaring 20's" aviation ignited the imaginations of people around the world. Pan American Airways was awarded a US Foreign Mail contract. On October 19th 1927, Pan Am flew the mail from Key West to Havana, Cuba and began a storied history.
EXPLORATIONS
Pan Am's first small land planes soon gave way in the early 1930s to newer, faster flying boats. Pan Am conducted exploratory survey flights over the Pacific and the Atlantic, opening commercial air routes where none had been before.
WORLD WAR TWO
As war clouds loomed, Pan Am and the U.S. government worked closely together to build, secure, and maintain vital air routes in a world increasingly fraught with danger. When Americans entered WW2, Pan Am joined the Allied effort, contracting with the US government & contributing to Allied victory.
POST WAR PAN AM
After World War Two, Pan Am's flying boats gave way to a new generation of large, sleek land planes, set to carry thousands to foreign destinations where once only a few could travel. Ever greater numbers of people were ready to go, and Pan Am was ready to take them.
INTO THE JET AGE
1950's piston-powered airliners were close to their limit of technical sophistication, but they still seemed a safe bet — except to Pan Am's Juan Trippe. He convinced US aircraft manufacturing rivals Douglas and Boeing to push the envelope to build jet-powered commercial aircraft, ushering in the Jet Age.
THE WORLD'S AIRLINE
Juan Trippe's life-long belief in the promise of aviation reached its culmination in 1969, lowering the cost of long distance air travel even further with the introduction of Pan Am Boeing 747s. The new "wide-body" aircraft served millions of new customers, ushering in a truly globalized, and more egalitarian epoch of air travel.
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