Bookshelf
Pan American World Airways: Aviation History Through the Words of Its People
• Edited by James Patrick Baldwin and Jeff Kriendler
• Bluewater Press
• www.bluewaterpress.com
• $29.95
Pan American World Airways has a permanent place in aviation history. As a pioneering airline, it opened new markets for international aviation all over the world and fostered the development of procedures and technologies that made intercontinental air travel feasible, from the earliest flying boats to its introduction of the 747.
An equally enduring part of Pan Am's legacy is the reputation of the company and its people as ambassadors of goodwill. In some quarters, Pan Am and its people are as remembered for their role in disaster relief and other humanitarian acts as for charting the Pacific.
A new book about Pan Am tells these and other stories from 75 points of view, all of them former employees.
"Pan American World Airways: Aviation History Through the Words of Its People" is a 220-page compilation of essays and reminiscences by pilots, flight attendants, publicists, headquarters executives and other employees. And they all have unique stories to tell.
The authors are Pan Am people who offer firsthand accounts of major events: the inaugural 707 flight in 1958; the press charter that accompanied President Kennedy to Dallas in 1963; the last flight out of Saigon in 1975; encounters with the Shah of Iran, Charles Lindbergh, Winston Churchill and other luminaries.
Edited by Jamie Baldwin, an aviation consultant, and Jeff Kriendler, a former Pan Am vice president for corporate communications, the book offers an impressive historical and geographic sweep.
The contributors range from Kathleen Clair, founder Juan Trippe's longtime assistant, and William Nash, a 94-year-old former flying boat captain, to the story of Mark Pyle, the 727 captain who found himself, on Dec. 4, 1991, piloting the last Pan Am aircraft in the air, anywhere.
Geographically, the contributors hail from all parts of the airline's global network, including Asia, Africa, Europe and South America.
Equally broad is the range of topics, from the arrival of the Beatles in the U.S. on a Pan Am jet, as told by one of the flight attendants, to the aftermath of air disasters such as the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 243 passengers and 16 crew members in 1988.
While the contributors deal with many company triumphs, the editors were also unstinting in their treatment of the company's demise.
The compilation includes sober reports from Pan Am people who were involved in events that marked the company's decline: the series of asset sales in the 1980s as Pan Am struggled to raise cash; the withdrawal from the Pacific; the end of Pan Am 001, or Clipper One; the vaunted Round-the-World flight.
For those who were not around to witness any part of the company's 65-year life, it might seem an exaggeration to say that Pan Am was a part of history. This book is a reminder that it's no exaggeration at all.