Any airline history buffs out there?

Hey y'all, I recently joined AH.com a few months ago and was inspired by the thread about Howard Hughes forming the fourth American TV network to write a TL about Pan American World Airways surviving to the present day and becoming one of the dominant legacy carriers in the American airline ecosystem. From my research I believe I have identified two possible PODs that would put Pan Am on the road to surviving the turbulent 80s and growing into a dominant position thereafter:

1. The CAB allows Pan Am to buy Eastern in 1974, thereby butterflying the need for domestic feed post-deregulation that led to the desperate bidding war for National.
2. Pan Am for some reason (perhaps Juan Trippe staying on as CEO a few more years?) goes less overboard on 747 purchases in the early 70s, which alleviates the need to have domestic feed to fill the planes enough to where they can be more measured and less desperate post deregulation and rely on their already existing international business long enough to possibly take advantage of the demise of Braniff to buy capacity for peanuts in comparison to the National merger with no fleet and labor compatibilty issues.

Which one of these would make for the most compelling story and also be the least ASB/require the least amount of handwavium to bring about, or is there a different/better POD that maybe I overlooked? Any input appreciated.
 
The proposed merger with Northwest from 88/89 going ahead is another POD.

True, but by that time they were already in hot water financially and had their reputation besmirched by PA103. It's possible they could have survived all of that with NW's capacity but by no means assured which is why Checchi and KLM stepped in in the first place, they didn't want Pan Am's disease dragging down Northwest with it.
 
Pan Am would do better with any airline other than National. National was heavy on the east coast so not as much as a feeder.
 
Pan Am would do better with any airline other than National. National was heavy on the east coast so not as much as a feeder.

That's exactly what I am thinking. I figure if they can pick up Braniff's scraps in 82, use them to grow organically, maybe they can snipe PSA and Piedmont before USAir is able to get them, and then you have a damn strong network for the era that is more than capable of feeding the int'l traffic at the JFK, MIA, and LAX hubs.
 
You really need something that kills off the National merger. PA overpaid for a carrier that was terrible at meeting the need for domestic feed. They needed a merger with a carrier that flew east-west, not north-south along the eastern seaboard. I think they would have been better trying to grow internally than buying National. That still would have left a problem in lacking a central, Midwest hub for their domestic network, but that issue could have been cured in 1985/6, when Ozark (STL) and Republic (MSP, MEM and DTW) went up for sale. Avoiding the National merger also partly avoids the financial problems that led to the sale of the Pacific Division to United.

Pulling this all together, you get something like this:

1980 -- The merger with National falls through. Faced with the need to generate feed for its international routes, and merger with either United or American being off the table, Pan Am decides to build that feed itself and to leverage its reputation for quality service to build its own long-haul domestic network, focusing on city-pairs like JFK-LAX and premium domestic routes like ORD-LGA and DCA-LGA. As a consequence, the Pan Am Shuttle gets off the ground early and is successful, leading to an expansion of the Shuttle concept to markets like LGA-ORD, DCA-ORD and SFO-LAX. These operations carry the company through what would otherwise have been lean years in the early 1980s. To further its operational expansion, a sizable order is placed for the Boeing 757, which becomes a backbone of the Pan Am domestic fleet. The success of the 757 and the advantages of a common type rating will lead to orders later in the decade for the 767-300.

1985 -- Ozark Airlines, with a hub in St. Louis, and Republic Airlines, with hubs in Detroit, Minneapolis and Memphis, are up for sale. Pan Am purchases Republic, which gives it a sizable presence in the Midwest and a foothold in the South.

1986 -- There is no sale of the Pan Am Pacific Division to United. Instead, Pan Am has steadily expanded its operation in San Francisco. Despite competition from United and PSA along the West Coast, Pan Am has become a fairly sizable presence linking cities of the West Coast among themselves and with the emerging market to Asia.

1988 -- No Pan Am 103 incident

1991 -- Eastern Airlines goes under. Pan Am purchases a large chunk of the assets of Eastern, including the hub at Atlanta.

1993 -- Pan Am is one of the three largest domestic carriers in the United States and the largest international carrier. It maintains domestic hubs at New York JFK, Miami, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis and San Francisco.

I'll leave it there, but I think that pretty much ensures Pan Am's survival to the present day. There are some holes in the domestic network such as no hub in Texas and no hub serving the Intermountain West, but it's still a pretty formidable presence everywhere else. If you want to, it isn't particularly hard to get Pan Am acquiring or establishing a Texas hub in 2005 when Delta pulled out of DFW and starting a hub in Denver when Continental pulled out in 1995.
 
Not too sure that I'm super enthused about the idea of purchasing Eastern's ATL hub, in fact that is a big part of why I'm leaning against the PA-EA merger in 74 POD. IOTL, Delta ate Eastern's lunch in Atlanta post-deregulation which was a big factor in driving Eastern to bamkruptcy and liquidation in 91. I do like the idea of placing a large order of 757s for transcon service. I really think given PA's emphasis on transoceanic and Caribbean/Latam routes, having a midcon hub is less vital and they would have been well served with a domestic route structure superficially similar to JetBlue's current one well into the post- deregulation era.

ETA: Also, another possibly big problem with Ozark/Republic is that they were probably worth more to TWA/Northwest Orient, respectively, than they were to another carrier since they were domestic carriers in those carriers home markets. Obtaining either one would have required a bidding war.

 
Last edited:
ational.
2. Pan Am for some reason (perhaps Juan Trippe staying on as CEO a few more years?) goes less overboard on 747 purchases in the early 70s, . . .
Sadly, Juan Trippe was the problem, per the book Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos, Thomas Petzinger Jr., around (?) 1993.


He and the CEO of Boeing were two older fellows pursuing one last big deal, rather than the right deal.
 
Last edited:
Sadly, Juan Trippe was the problem (per the book Hard Landing).

He and the CEO of Boeing were two older fellows pursuing one last big deal, rather than the right deal.

Ah, good to know. Most of the literature out there I can find makes it sound like Trippe was a saint and all the CEOs that came behind him screwed the pooch. Any plausible way he could have been sent out to pasture a few years early?
 
It'd have to be grandkids or philanthrophic work, keep scenario simple.

And/or he believes succession is one of the most important things a good CEO can do.
 
Not too sure that I'm super enthused about the idea of purchasing Eastern's ATL hub, in fact that is a big part of why I'm leaning against the PA-EA merger in 74 POD. IOTL, Delta ate Eastern's lunch in Atlanta post-deregulation which was a big factor in driving Eastern to bamkruptcy and liquidation in 91. I do like the idea of placing a large order of 757s for transcon service. I really think given PA's emphasis on transoceanic and Caribbean/Latam routes, having a midcon hub is less vital and they would have been well served with a domestic route structure superficially similar to JetBlue's current one well into the post- deregulation era.

ETA: Also, another possibly big problem with Ozark/Republic is that they were probably worth more to TWA/Northwest Orient, respectively, than they were to another carrier since they were domestic carriers in those carriers home markets. Obtaining either one would have required a bidding war.

Good points, though to be truly competitive with United and American, at some point building a comprehensive domestic network would have been a necessity and that means having a hub which is somewhere in the interior of the country. By 1985, United had Chicago and Denver, American had Dallas and Chicago, TWA had St. Louis, Northwest had Minneapolis, Delta had Atlanta and Dallas. The fact that these hubs existed makes moving in on them with internal growth rather difficult as these hubs evolved out of a pre-deregulation position of strength and several served as hubs before the hub concept really existed as such. While Pan Am certainly wasn't without its own areas of strength, its coastal strong points at MIA and JFK were very poor domestic hub locations (and part of the reason the National merger was terrible). To grow and to evolve as a major domestic carrier and to avoid routing all transatlantic traffic through delay-plagued New York, Pan Am needed one or more interior hubs. Chicago already had United and American, Atlanta had Eastern and Delta, St. Louis had TWA and Ozark, Minneapolis had Northwest and Republic (as did Detroit). Part of what makes Chicago and Atlanta such powerhouses as hubs is the massive amount of O&D traffic already there and those markets were closed off circa 1985 by competition. DEN, ORD, DFW, MSP, STL, DTW and ATL were all host to two carriers using that airport as a hub. Merger was the only way to get a foothold at one of these airports and with TWA, Northwest United and American off the table for one reason or another, Ozark and Republic were all that was left to get a solid east-west route structure. While neither was really optimal, Republic gave you DTW, MSP and MEM. I'd argue that that this market access was worth paying for, even at a premium. It would all be terribly messy of course; there was a chasm in company cultures and little fleet compatibility, but the alternative was death by a thousand cuts as the carriers with internal hubs slowly took away Pan Am's transatlantic and Caribbean market share. This last point is the key, because few people are going to fly to JFK to connect to Europe when they can do so through ORD or DTW on a flight that is not only carrying international passengers connecting, but domestic connections as well.

One other option would have been a play for USAir and its PIT hub. I'd argue that PIT is too close to the East Coast and generates less traffic than DTW and MSP, which also offer a unique position of market strength in the Midwest, particularly at MSP, where Delta is to this day running a highly profitable operation in a region very dependent on air travel. Piedmont could have been another possibility, I suppose, but the only thing there which would have been valuable to Pan Am would have been the Charlotte hub. Dayton and Baltimore really didn't offer much to a carrier trying to be an alternative to United and American.

In the same way, ATL would have been simply too good an opportunity to pass up, even at the cost of dehubbing MEM in the process. OTL, there was nobody around who could have capitalized on it. TWA made a run at it that failed, while UA and AA each had new hubs at IAD and RDU which performed part of the same function as ATL. For Pan Am, it's a unique chance to open up the growing Southeast and a good location between Miami and JFK. In 1991, Delta was still mainly a domestic and regional carrier which had recently added hubs at Cincinnati and Salt Lake City (via merger with Western). I have no doubt Delta could have held its own at ATL, but Pan Am, as a global carrier that in this world Delta would not be, would have also held its own in a city that was at the time increasingly tied to the world.
 

So I suppose there are a couple of directions we could go with this, one, you could have United buy out NW Orient in lieu of the OTL purchase of PA's Pacific division, that would eliminate a competitor for the purchase of Republic and make that move more financially palatable. Or, I know TWA also ran into financial trouble after the Ozark purchase, which led to them being bought and subsequently flushed down the toilet by Carl Icahn. So you could have PA win a bidding war for TWA over Icahn.

ETA: The more I look at it, the more I like the buying TWA option. TWA had a top-notch domestic network out of STL and integrating their TATL ops would make PA the 800-pound gorilla of TATL. My only concern is the latter point would inevitably draw antitrust scrutiny, but the Reagan DOJ never met a merger they didn't like, so I don't think that would be a dealbreaker.
 
Last edited:
So I suppose there are a couple of directions we could go with this, one, you could have United buy out NW Orient in lieu of the OTL purchase of PA's Pacific division, that would eliminate a competitor for the purchase of Republic and make that move more financially palatable. Or, I know TWA also ran into financial trouble after the Ozark purchase, which led to them being bought and subsequently flushed down the toilet by Carl Icahn. So you could have PA win a bidding war for TWA over Icahn.

ETA: The more I look at it, the more I like the buying TWA option. TWA had a top-notch domestic network out of STL and integrating their TATL ops would make PA the 800-pound gorilla of TATL. My only concern is the latter point would inevitably draw antitrust scrutiny, but the Reagan DOJ never met a merger they didn't like, so I don't think that would be a dealbreaker.

I hadn't considered a TWA merger, but it might work. If Ozark/TWA and Republic/Northwest could get approved, I suppose Pan Am/TWA isn't all that crazy.

And TWA did have a pretty robust domestic network in 1987: http://www.departedflights.com/TW060187.html

compared to Pan Am:

http://www.departedflights.com/PA060187domestic.html

But compare Republic in 1986 which is comparable to TWA:

http://www.departedflights.com/RC030286.html
 
I hadn't considered a TWA merger, but it might work. If Ozark/TWA and Republic/Northwest could get approved, I suppose Pan Am/TWA isn't all that crazy.

And TWA did have a pretty robust domestic network in 1987: http://www.departedflights.com/TW060187.html

compared to Pan Am:

http://www.departedflights.com/PA060187domestic.html

But compare Republic in 1986 which is comparable to TWA:

http://www.departedflights.com/RC030286.html

Well, to me all things considered, picking up TWA right around the time Icahn started fire-selling parts of it IOTL to fund his own PE's capital shortfalls sounds a heck of a lot better than bidding against NW for Republic, especially when considering that TWA already had domestic feed into JFK and would only have one hub out of the system to integrate, and Republic's fleet and labor compatibility issues plus having all of its operations concentrated in three hubs out of the existing Pan Am system creating an issue where Pan Am then has three domestic hubs and three completely separate international hubs. (ETA: Actually, four, as I plan on having them make BOS a reliever TATL hub for JFK after the purchase of Braniff's carcass.) Sounds to me like the potential for a National size headache down the line.

Also, looking down the line if NW is knocked out of the game early or has its growth severely stunted, it could create issues of available legacy carriers to merge with when you get to the late Aughts and the remaining legacies want to merge down to mega-carriers. Gotta try to have enough dance partners left over.

Anyways, I just want to give a big thanks to you for your input ITT. I know it may seem like I've poo-poohed a lot of your suggestions, but you really have opened my mind up to a lot of possibilites and details I may have overlooked if I just went ahead and barreled into writing my TL without seeking any outside input.
 
...Anyways, I just want to give a big thanks to you for your input ITT. I know it may seem like I've poo-poohed a lot of your suggestions, but you really have opened my mind up to a lot of possibilites and details I may have overlooked if I just went ahead and barreled into writing my TL without seeking any outside input.

I look forward to the TL and am glad I could help. As for the rest, I just wouldn't be a discussion of the airline business without some disagreement, would it? :)

I rather like the idea of Lambert remaining a hub; I flew AA in there a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty depressing, a far cry from the bustling TWA hub I remember from the 80s and 90s, but also a reminder of how awful the layout there was a hub. I will give out bonus points for you figuring out how to get STL a new terminal along the lines of the Delta/Northwest terminal at DTW! Though STL was nothing nearly as bad as the old Detroit North Terminal complex used by Republic and later Northwest. That place was a horror show for connections.
 
I look forward to the TL and am glad I could help. As for the rest, I just wouldn't be a discussion of the airline business without some disagreement, would it? :)

I rather like the idea of Lambert remaining a hub; I flew AA in there a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty depressing, a far cry from the bustling TWA hub I remember from the 80s and 90s, but also a reminder of how awful the layout there was a hub. I will give out bonus points for you figuring out how to get STL a new terminal along the lines of the Delta/Northwest terminal at DTW! Though STL was nothing nearly as bad as the old Detroit North Terminal complex used by Republic and later Northwest. That place was a horror show for connections.

Yeah I remember that old terminal, I used to work for a Northwest regional and I connected through there shortly before it was closed on my way to Atlanta while meeting my little stepbrother who lived in Detroit who was accompanying me on the leg to ATL. What a nightmare that was.
 
Top