AHC: Pan American Airways stays in flight

Exactly what it says on the tin. What would be needed to Keep Pan Am flying to the present day? Extra credit if you keep them the dominant force in air travel.
 
They would have to avoid purchasing National Airlines after deregulation. And they would also have to avoid selling their Pacific routes to United. And, if you want to butterfly Lockerbie away, which was a major contributing factor to its demise, you would need to toughen up Pan Am's security. Or have the U.S. government be more aware of the bomb threats.
 

Clipper747

Banned
Merger of TWA and Pan Am in 1969 where the Pan Am name is kept. PA desperately needed domestic routes but was continuously denied because of it's utter dominance in int'l travel. Merging TWA into PA, would be the ticket.

Also the new PA might have to reduce it's number of 747 orders from 36 to a max. of 12-15 aircraft. Have the 707s committed to all thin long haul routes, dump the JT4 powered 707s onto the used market or trade them in for additional 727-200s.

Reduce the number of L1011 Tristars or keep the original number and phase out all 707s from the fleet by 1973/74.

Have only 727 and 747 Freighters for the Cargo network get rid of the 707s.

Keep the 747SP orders.

Do not order the L1011-500s.

Do not buy National.

Establish fortress hub in Miami after 1980.

Keep TWA Kansas/St. Louis hub dominance.

Establish SFO as major Pac gateway.

Keep JFK hub, reinforce ORD hub.
 
Merger of TWA and Pan Am in 1969 where the Pan Am name is kept. PA desperately needed domestic routes but was continuously denied because of it's utter dominance in int'l travel. Merging TWA into PA, would be the ticket.

Also the new PA might have to reduce it's number of 747 orders from 36 to a max. of 12-15 aircraft. Have the 707s committed to all thin long haul routes, dump the JT4 powered 707s onto the used market or trade them in for additional 727-200s.

Reduce the number of L1011 Tristars or keep the original number and phase out all 707s from the fleet by 1973/74.

Have only 727 and 747 Freighters for the Cargo network get rid of the 707s.

Keep the 747SP orders.

Do not order the L1011-500s.

Do not buy National.

Establish fortress hub in Miami after 1980.

Keep TWA Kansas/St. Louis hub dominance.

Establish SFO as major Pac gateway.

Keep JFK hub, reinforce ORD hub.

With that username, I expect this is a topic quite close to your heart.
 

Cook

Banned
Don't let this happen:

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I would agree with THE OBSERVER that not purchasing National Airlines would be a good idea. Though that leaves the problem of lack of domestic feed to its international network unsolved, which was a primary motivator in the National purchase.

Extending on that, is there any plausible POD where Pan Am could slowly build a domestic feeder network starting in the 1960s without having to outright take over another airline?
 
I would agree with THE OBSERVER that not purchasing National Airlines would be a good idea. Though that leaves the problem of lack of domestic feed to its international network unsolved, which was a primary motivator in the National purchase.

Extending on that, is there any plausible POD where Pan Am could slowly build a domestic feeder network starting in the 1960s without having to outright take over another airline?

Problem is, they were barred by regulation. Then when de-regulation happened, overseas routes were opened to all domestic carriers, but Pan Am was specifically barred from opening domestic routes due to lobbying by the smaller airlines.
 

Clipper747

Banned
Extending on that, is there any plausible POD where Pan Am could slowly build a domestic feeder network starting in the 1960s without having to outright take over another airline?



No. Routes were awarded by the Civilian Aviation Bureau and were often done for political reasons depending on whether a Rep. or Dem Pres. was in office.
Many times the routes awarded never made any sense.
For example Northeast was given Miami-L.A. in 1969, and National was given Atlanta-L.A./SFO the same year I believe. National didn't even have a station at ATL, and Northeast's route to L.A. had no chance because it went up against National's strong route structure from Florida to the Southwest. Not to mention Northeast was flying the route with a small 727-100.

So Pan Am's only chance was to merge with TWA back in 1969 but it was blocked.
Interestingly enough TWA tried to acquire Pan Am in 1961/62 but that never went anywhere.
Pan Am by 1970 was an airline that had no domestic routes, and a plethora of long thin routes with the exception of JFK-LHR vv, JFK-FRA vv. All the other routes to Africa, South Pacific, Near East, Far East were basically served once a day or even once a week with a single 707.
The big money maker for Pan Am in 1970 were the North Atlantic routes and the handful of "grandfather rights" routes to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Manila.
However, even the North Atlantic routes were dicey because of the severe competition from TWA, and all the West European airlines plus the fact that the North Atlantic routes were subject to seasonal load factors. Fewer people flew in the Winter than the Summer peak season.

Things got so bad for Pan Am in 1974 that the carrier approached the Shah of Iran if he was interested in purchasing the airline. That of course fell through.

From 1968-1988 Pan Am made money only a handful of times: 1968, 1977,1978,1979, 1987. Of these years '68, '78 were the best.


With that username, I expect this is a topic quite close to your heart.

Pretty much. I traveled a lot in the '70s and '80s with my family to Yugoslavia. Pan Am was basically the main overseas carrier that we traveled aboard.




As for the A300 I could never figure out why Pan Am went for Airbus. The only thing I can come up with is that in 1983/84 they were hurting financially and desperately needed some smaller widebody to fit in their network. Airbus approached them with lease deals that were very cheap bargain basement type. Boeing couldn't match the offer and Pan Am went with the Euro consortium. Plans were made in 1985 to replace the entire 727 fleet with A320's by 1990/92. I honestly think that Pan Am's eventual fleet was to go with Airbus as a whole and jettison their 747-100/200s with A340s.
 
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The south american routes,at least the brazilian ones started to be very profitable about the 90´s,Pan Am have just starde to tasted whent closed it´s operations.They had just started to fly to Recife when they closed.I remember when i was a kid in the 70´s and i was in vacation in Rio de Janriro we went to the airport to see a Jumbo 747,great times.
 
Pan American was a giant on feet of clay from its beginning all the way to the end. It is very naïve to think that avoiding Lockerbie would save the airline in the long run, it would have helped for sure but it would not have solved the longstanding issues affecting the airline including:
-An old and inefficient fleet. The 747s had to be replaced sooner rather than later as they were quickly becoming obsolete for Transatlantic operations. The A310s were not a suitable replacement as this plane had poor economics and performances. The ideal plane for Pan-Am would have been the Boeing 767-300, or at the very least more L1011-500s to be replaced by A330s or B777s during the nineties.
-A lack of high quality hubs and high quality domestic feed. Miami is a good hub for South American operations but not for anything else. Pan-Am needed at least three fortress hubs in order to fight the competition on strong terms, Miami, New York and Los Angeles would have been perfect.
-Incompetent management, that's the big one here since the management was selling off chunks of the company to keep it afloat which is not a good strategy.
-Useless intra-European operations. As soon as the Iron curtain fell, maintaining the intra German shuttle system and the local feeding routes in Europe was bound to fail. A far better strategy would have been to sell said operations to Lufthansa or to another European airline and to use this as a base on which to build a strategic partnership à la Air France-Delta; British Airways-American or Lufthansa-United.

Merging with Northwest Airlines in 1989 may have saved the airline until the present day. But integrating the two airlines would have been a huge task especially considering how different their respective hubs and fleets were.

Even if deregulation had allowed Pan Am to set up a domestic network, setting up said network from scratch would have taken a decade and been extremely costly. Eastern Airlines would have been a good merger partner, but even then issues would inevitably have arisen as they always do in megers.

The best bet for Pan Am to survive is for the airline to be allowed to set up a domestic network from the fifties onwards. This might happen if Pan Am and American Overseas Airlines don't merge, thereby lessening Pan Am dominance internationally.
Alternatively have deregulation happening during the sixties with no restrictions on Pan-Am.

I would consider no deregulation as good enough. Air travel in the US just went down hill after that.

Yeah sure because enabling people who could not otherwise fly to fly means that things are going downhill :rolleyes:.
 
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