Boeing 747-200 - Pan Am

Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet

Boeing 747-200 - Pan Am

21 January 1970 is the day of the world's first widebody commercial flight when Pan Am flew a Boeing 747 from New York to London Heathrow. Pan Am was the first customer for the Jumbo Jet and played a major role in the emergence of this aircraft type. In total Pan Am operated 65 Boeing 747-100's, -200s and -SPs. The picture shows two Jumbo Jets in different liveries at Frankfurt Rhein/Main Airport, where the airline operated a big hub during many years.

Pan Am was a real aviation pioneer. It was founded in 1927 in the Key West as Pan American Airways by Juan Terry Trippe. Pan Am's first activity was flying mail between Key West and Havana. With the arrival of a Fokker F.7 it started a passenger service on the same route in January 1928.

During the 1930s flying boats played a major role in the expansion of Pan Am. Flying boats were used for example to start services to South America, over the Pacific and over the Atlantic Ocean.

Pan Am developed as a mostly international airline. It lacked a large domestic network like American, Delta and United had. This meant that Pan Am couldn't compete effectively with these airlines when they started intercontinental services after US deregulation in 1979. To rise money the airline sold its Pacific routes to United Airlines and the transatlantic services to Delta.

On 21 December 1988 PanAm 747 'Clipper Maid of the Seas' was blown up in the air by a terrorist bomb when it flew over Lockerbie in Scotland on its way from London Heathrow to New York. In that disaster 270 people died, including 11 inhabitants of Lockerbie. Pan Am didn't survive this final blow. In December 1991 the airline stopped flying and that marked the end of one of the proudest airline histories in the world.