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| Founded | March 14, 1927 (as Pan American Airways (PAA)) | |||
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| Commenced operations | October 19, 1927 | |||
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| Frequent-flyer program | WorldPass | |||
| Airport lounge | Clipper Club | |||
| Subsidiaries | Pan Am Express | |||
| Fleet size | 270 aircraft; 71 spacescaft | |||
| Company slogan | “The System of the Flying Clippers” (1946–1953)
"World's Most Experienced Airline" (1953–early 1970s) “Experience makes the difference”/"Pan Am makes the going great." (early 1970s) “America's airline to the world” (late 1970s) “You can't beat the experience” (1980s) “Die Flügel Berlins” (1980s, only in Germany) "Every country has an airline. The World has Pan Am." (late 1980s) | |||
| Parent company | Pan Am Corporation | |||
| Headquarters | New York City
Miami, Florida | |||
Pan American Spaceways, commonly known as Pan Am, is the principal and largest international air and Low Earth Orbit carrier in the United States. Founded in 1927 as a scheduled air mail and passenger service operating between Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba, the airline became a major company credited with many innovations that shaped the international airline industry, including the widespread use of jet aircraft then jumbo jets then Supersonic Transport, then computerized reservation systems and now Earth-Moon spaceflight services. It was also a founding member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global airline industry association. Identified by its blue globe logo, the use of the word "Clipper" in aircraft names and call signs, and the white pilot uniform caps, the airline is a cultural icon of the 20th century. In an era dominated by flag carriers that were wholly or majority government-owned, it is also the unofficial flag carrier of the United States. Pan Am's flagship terminal is the Worldport located at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and its space operations are located at Space Station V in Low Earth Orbit.
History[]
In 1974 Pan Am became the world's first airline to include supersonic transports (SSTs). The introduction of the Boeing 2707-300 was a major breakthrough for the company bringing passengers to speeds of Mach 2.7 and altitudes high in the stratosphere refered to as the "edge of space" (78,000 feet). However, while economical because the ability to perform multiple transatlantic flights/day it's ticket price remained expensive and out of reach for most fliers until the 1982 introduction of the Boeing 2707-390 and later 2707-475 into Pan Am's fleet. Many Pan Am SST's were dubbed "Supersonic Clippers".
In the early 1980s Pan Am became the first commercial spaceline when they began purchasing and reselling seats on the Space Shuttle. Initially these tickets cost millions of dollars and many were taken primarily by the employees of in-space Research, Manufacturing and Satellite companies. By the mid 1980s however the introduction of a custom passenger module allowed the cost per seat to reach the hundreds of thousands of dollars range. Regular traffic services to Geosychronous Orbit, Lunar Polar Orbit and the Lunar Surface have also been provided by Pan Am since the early 1980s for the low millions of dollars range. Initally space operations were based at the 100-person Space Station-IV (also known as "Space Base") but with the station's retirement in the 1990s it has since moved to Space Station V (predicted to last well into the 2020s). The Earth-LEO or LEO-Moon/GEO Shuttles painted with Pan Am logos were sometimes dubbed "Space Clippers".
