Saving Pan Am

As Mentioned before Boeing wanted to stretch the 727 but the airlines wanted a different aircraft. 2 engines were more economical than 3. Engines got more fuel efficient and with the new design there was less drag.
docfl
 
Whoa... the Pan Am Concorde looks eerily like that space plane from 2001: A Space Odyssey!

Nope pictured was the Boeing SST not the Concorde.
Here is the 2001 space craft.
PAN%20AM%20SPACE%20CLIPPER%20MAIN.jpg
 
The 747 was only intended to be in passenger service as an interim aircraft. The idea was that as Supersonic aircraft came online they would be converted to Cargo use. That was a major reason for its layout with the raised cockpit so ther could be straight in loading through the nose of side by side containers.

Also a major turning point for SSTs was the 1973 oil embargo and the huge increase in fuel costs. Suddenly it made more sense to haul 400 passengers at Mach .9 in a more economical aircraft
 

Clipper747

Banned
That reminds me of something I heard a few years ago. IIRC Southwest was able to keep it's airfares low and got a lot of new business around or before 9/11 because it had negoiated a multi year contract with it's fuel provider that locked in the price at a low rate. Hence it wasn't as affected when cost of oil went through the roof , while other airlines had to cut service or increase costs to cover the higher prices for fuel.

Perhaps ITTL Pan Am could something similiar before the oil embargo hits and hence could operate both it's regular service and the Concorde service at lower costs then it's rivals?

The problem was that the Civil Aviation Bureau regulated ticket prices. The Concorde entered limited service in '76 with BA/AF so 1972 would be too early as the aircraft was still undergoing modification and testing. PA was also going through a big overhaul in operations, trimming excess capacity and making the most use out of daily aircraft utilization. The only option PA had in operating Concorde would be some sort of dual use similar to Singapore/British Airways or British/Braniff however in this case it would be Pan Am/Iran Air interchange perhaps between JFK-Tehran making a stop in Heathrow. PA flight crew could fly JFK-LHR vv and Iran Air LHR-Tehran vv. Cabin crew could be mixed between the two airlines on the route. That's the only way PA would've operated the aircraft by sharing the costs with the Shah's gov't.
 
The 747 was only intended to be in passenger service as an interim aircraft. The idea was that as Supersonic aircraft came online they would be converted to Cargo use. That was a major reason for its layout with the raised cockpit so ther could be straight in loading through the nose of side by side containers.

Also a major turning point for SSTs was the 1973 oil embargo and the huge increase in fuel costs. Suddenly it made more sense to haul 400 passengers at Mach .9 in a more economical aircraft

Not quite, The 747 was Boeing entry in the CX-HLS program.The conversion to a passenger aircraft came later.
docfl
 
OK, here's a bit of alternate history about Pan Am, and what happened:

The world's most experienced airline ended the 1960s on a high, with a big order of Boeing 747s on the way, orders for both of the world's major supersonic airlines, the Anglo-French Concorde and the American Boeing 2707. The fleet also included Boeing 707, 727 and 737 models. Lockheed L-1011s, Airbus A300s, Boeing 747SPs and other aircraft arrive in the 1970s.

The oil crisis is a massive shock, and the cancellation of the Boeing 2707 is another. Pan Am remains committed to the Concorde, which enters PA service in 1976. Pan Am, however, never uses their 20 Concordes on the original New York/Washington to Europe flights. Instead, the Pan Am Concordes are immediately assigned to San Francisco-Anchorage-Tokyo runs, and starting from 1978, Los Angeles-Honolulu-Fiji-Sydney runs. The Concordes prove to be worth their weight in gold on the long-distance flights, knocking hours off of the long trips between the distant cities. British Airways and Singapore Airlines would soon copy this, with their own London-Cairo-Bombay-Singapore routes. Other PA Concordes would be used for charter flights to Rio de Janiero, Mexico City, Jamaica and New Zealand, and also used on fifth freedom routes to deliver passengers to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada. The Concorde service is a moneymaker right up until its retirement in 2004.

The lack of a domestic network bit hard after the energy crisis, and the massive fleet of 747s didn't help matters. Pan Am undergoes a major restructuring program in 1975-77, which returns the company to profitability. The company attempts to move into greater international markets, and this proves to be fairly successful. Pan Am's use of cash reserves to expand its Intercontinental Hotels chain in the 1970s proves to be a shrewd investment, but the kicker of that set was Pan Am's 1981 purchase of a major stake in Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. After Pan Am's domestic route network grows into being in the 1980s, Pan Am's ownership of Royal Caribbean and Intercontinental proves to be a massive profit maker for the company, allowing the company to sell complete vacations, and in the process have the ability to know exactly how good the service will be.

Pan Am's purchase of Alaska Airlines in 1979 was a turning point in the history of the company. Now armed with a domestic license, Pan Am turns its weight into this market, focusing on longer flights into its four primary gateway cities - New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami. The deal also turns Alaska's base in Seattle into a major gateway as well. This also finds a use for Pan Am's fleet of 747s, as many of these are assigned to domestic routes for their large passenger capacity. The problems with competition in the domestic market did exist, but Pan Am's image proved to be a benefit, and over 30 US destinations were added to the airline's route map by 1989. Alaska's management continued to run the Alaska division of Pan Am, and their innovations proved in a number of cases to be used across the airline.

As for the aircraft, the Boeing 707s began to be retired by the middle of the 1970s. Pan Am is a launch customer for both the 757 and 767 programs, placing faith in Boeing's products despite the new competition from Airbus and existing competitors in McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed, though the latter pulls out of the commercial airline business in 1984 following sales far lower than had been hoped for. The 757s and 767s enter the fleet in numbers in the 1980s, and not a moment too soon to replace the large number of 727s and older 737s in service with Pan Am. The begin to be replaced on European services by A300s in 1974 and A310s begin doing US-Europe routes in 1978. Despite this, the airlines' domestic expansion keeps its L-1011s in service, and an improved version of the Rolls-Royce Trent engine, developed by Orenda Engines in Canada, improves the type's fuel efficiency considerably, keeping them in service for longer periods. The Orenda developments of the L-1011 became one of the biggest moneymakers ever for the famed Canadian firm, and this allows Lockheed to make larger and longer-ranged variants of the L-1011, also allowing the TriStars to remain in the fleet for a much longer period of time. The old 727s left the fleet for good in 1992, replaced by a combination of Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s, the latter eventually also cycling out the 737s by the early 2000s.

Eastern Air Lines' collapse in 1991 caused a very large number of its people, a number of its routes and some of its aircraft to move to Pan Am, who bought a bunch of Eastern's routes and TriStars for pennies on the dollar. Not long after, however, the company was sued by Eastern's boss, Frank Lorenzo, claiming that Pan Am had undermined his operations. Eastern's ex-employees, fearing problems at work and hating Lorenzo's destruction of their employer, ran a newspaper ad in the New York Times on December 9, 1991, touting the "World's Most Experienced Airline" and totally refuting Lorenzo's claims. Pan Am would later repay the cost of that ad to the employees to paid it, because of the publicity. Despite being undercut by the low-cost airlines on fares, the company's service levels did improve with the new employees, and Pan Am began to again claim its illustrious image of being the world's best airline.

That reborn image carried them well into the 1990s. The company passed on the Airbus A330 in favor of the Boeing 777, which both phased out the TriStars and eventually also passed out the earliest of 747s still operating with Pan Am, with Pan Am's first 777 entered service two days after its first flight with United in June 1995. The airline's fleet underwent major changes in the 1990s, with the last 747-100 retired in 1998 and the last of its A300s retired in 2004, along with the end of the company's L-1011s and 727s, and its last early 737, which was retired in 2002. In their place came greater numbers of A320s, a handful of 747-400s and dozens of 777s, the 777-300 version taking over on many of the longest routes Pan Am flies.

The Concorde service ended in 2004 without replacement, though Pan Am had bankrolled part of the NASA research project for supersonic transports. Despite the faith put down in Boeing, the company did eventually order a number of Airbus A380s in 2002. The long delays of the A380 program, however, saw that order cancelled in 2008 and switched to the Boeing 747-8 when Boeing, fishing for orders, gave Pan Am a considerable discount on the new versions of the plane that had effectively been built to Pan Am's specifications in the 1960s. The late 2000s also saw a huge order for short-haul airliners for Pan Am's smaller routes, a 100-airplane order that four manufacturers - Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and Bombardier - fought like hell over, and which to the shock of the aviation world, Bombardier won. (Orenda, who with Pratt and Whitney Canada developed the engines for the Bombardier CS130, later admitted to lobbying Pan Am in favor of the Canadian aircraft, something the others were not impressed about - but Pan Am's order stood.) The company also owns a number of short-haul small airlines to feed its mostly longer-distance operations.

As of 2011, Pan Am is the largest of American airlines, with a fleet size of 650 aircraft and a total of over 225 destinations on all six inhabited continents of the world (getting that distinction back when Pan Am resumed flights to Cape Town and Johannesburg in 1991) and a reputation for excellence. Even terrorist attacks, such as the bombing that felled Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988 did not wreck the company's image. With a history of innovation that continues today, the company advertises, and is widely regarded, as being one better than even the other major US carriers (Delta, Continental, American, United and Northwest) and has little issue promoting its class of service, and works hard to ensure its status remains intact, even against companies such as Emirates and Cathay Pacific who fight hard to take such positions from Pan Am. A founding member of Star Alliance (along with United, SAS, Air Canada, Lufthansa and Thai International), the company's network is vast, and the company regularly provides managers and personnel to assist other airlines that are members of Star Alliance.
 
Where are the hubs of the other airlines in this scenario. BTW, I can see Pan Am having a base in Seattle. Hell, maybe your take on Pan Am can be incorporated into your Transport America TL. BTW Again, think you'll be writing another installment of The Future is Green again? I think it's fine as is, but I wonder what could come next.
 
Where are the hubs of the other airlines in this scenario.

I don't see them being different. The hubs ITTL are the same as IOTL, plus SeaTac, which they gained as a hub through the buying of Alaska Airlines in 1979.

BTW, I can see Pan Am having a base in Seattle. Hell, maybe your take on Pan Am can be incorporated into your Transport America TL.

I did have them in Transport America do much of this, though in that world, the 2707 did fly (albeit in the 1990s and modified somewhat instead of early 1970s) and Pan Am and the New York Central railroad started working with the company in the early 1970s to improve the railroad's passenger service, and Pan Am eventually bought them out in 1980.

BTW Again, think you'll be writing another installment of The Future is Green again? I think it's fine as is, but I wonder what could come next.

Right now, I don't have time for it, honestly. In Defense of Humanity is sucking up most of that, I'm afraid.
 
docfl said:
Not quite, The 747 was Boeing entry in the CX-HLS program.The conversion to a passenger aircraft came later.
docfl

The Boeing entry in the CX-HLS competition was not the same design as the 747. It may have been the starting point but the 747 design was greatly changed from the competition design. The concept of converting passenger 747s to cargo was part of the sales pitch when hawking 747s to airlines.

Another reason for the non introduction of SSTs was the restriction in overland supersonic flight that started being introduced. When countries started considering these it limited many of the routes that SSTs could serve
 
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