Pan Am Airways: All-American in Name and Scope

This segment takes us back to Florida and to perhaps the most famous airline based out of Florida-Pan American Airways. And having studied the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line and Chalk's Ocean Airways, which use(d) flying boats, what do you suppose Pan Am once was famous for flying? If you guessed flying boats, give yourself a pat on the back! Of course in the early days runways were few and crude. The ocean waters were free-and Florida had plenty of coastline!

Pan Am took off on the eve of the Great Depression. Then called Pan American Airways, the airline took flight on 28 October 1927. This has been hailed as the first scheduled international flight by a United States airline. However, as we've seen in our study of Chalk's Ocean Airways, a closer look is in order. Chalk's flew from Florida to the Bahamas. Isn't that considered an international flight?

The plane used on this inaugural flight was a Fokker tri-motor airplane made of cloth and wood (as most aircraft were in those days). The Fokker was loaded with mail sacks and took off from a dirt runway in Key West, Florida. One hour and ten minutes later the tri-motor landed in Havana, Cuba. It had flown a distance of ninety miles.

This tri-motor was one of two aircraft that Juan Terry Trippe, Pan Am's twenty-eight year old founder, used to begin his airline. Twenty-four employees worked under the goal "to provide mass air transportation for the average man at rates he can afford to pay."

Pan Am gained approval for this route from the U.S. government because the government feared that the German-owned Colombian carrier SCADTA (Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aereos, "Colombian-German Air Transport Society") would have a monopoly on routes between Latin America and the United States. Pan Am solicited passengers on Florida trains and patrons of Havana nightclubs to fill its two Fokker Tri-motors.

Within three months the airline had a daily schedule for passengers between Florida and Cuba. Initial success led to the acquisition of new aircraft, the hiring of more employees, and expanded routes. Soon Floridians could fly to the Caribbean islands, Mexico, Central America, and South America.

The story of Pan Am's growth in Latin America reflects the growing pains of the infant passenger aviation sector. It was Trippe's plan to extend Pan Am's network through all of Central and South America. Growth came during the late 1920's and early 1930's as Pan Am purchased ailing and defunct airlines in Central and South America. Trippe also negotiated with federal postal officials to win most of the U.S. government's air mail contracts to the region. A tour of Latin America in September of 1929 with Charles Lindbergh didn't hurt Trippe's plan to negotiate landing rights in a number of countries. A coup was securing landing rights in Columbia, SCADTA's home turf! Soon Pan Am offered flights along the west coast of South America to Peru. Pan Am also purchased the New York, Rio, and Buenos Aires Line (NYRBA). This gave Pan Am a seaplane route along the east coast of South America to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and westbound to Santiago, Chile.

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