ON THIS DATE: PAN AM 1927-1991

THE FOLLOWING EDITORIAL IS USED BY PERMISSION AND COURTESY OF THE MIAMI HERALD (C) 1991 FOR WHICH THIS AUTHOR IS EXCEEDINGLY GRATEFUL. ON THIS DATE IN 1991, AT 9 AM, THE NEW YORK OFFICES OF PAN AM OPENED-- AND CLOSED AN HOUR LATER. ALL NIGHT, BROADCASTER LARRY KING KEPT INTONING IN BETWEEN PHONE CALLS ON HIS TV SHOW, INCREDULOUS, "PAN AM OUT OF BUSINESS". IT DEFIED THE KEN OF HUMAN IMAGINING. THIS IS DEDICATED TO EVERY MEMBER OF THE PAN AM FAMILY WHO PROUDLY FLEW THE SKIES OF THE WORLD WITH CLASS, INNOVATION AND DIGNITY.

__________________________________________________

PAN AM: THE COUP DE GRACE Herald Staff
DELTA AIRLINES didn't rise from a crop-dusting service to a major carrier by making dumb decisions. Indeed, aviation's insiders have regarded Delta as one of the world's best-managed airlines. Wall Street plainly agrees.
Yet even the smartest businesses suffer awful, even cruel, lapses in judgment. That occurred on Tuesday when Delta abruptly canceled a deal to help Pan Am fly out of bankruptcy. Yesterday, unable to obtain interim financing, Pan Am folded.
This was a bitter blow for Pan Am's customers, suppliers, and creditors. Worse, it was devastating news for Pan Am's 9,000 employees and for South Florida, where 6,000-plus employees were based. Aside from the economic calamity, patterns of air travel have been disrupted.
The sense of betrayal is great because all of the other pieces of the rescue had fallen into place -- despite daunting bankruptcy-court deadlines. Pan Am's unions had ratified sacrificial concessions. Creditors had approved an ambitious but workable plan emphasizing routes to Latin America, with Miami as Pan Am's new headquarters and operational hub.
Yet Delta was unpersuaded. Said spokesman Clay McConnell: "Once the business plan was formulated, a careful study of it led us to make this painful decision." Why? Slow business and Pan Am's large losses this fall played a role. So did a surge in fuel prices. Yet the decisive factor, he explained, was Pan Am's "poor bookings for travel in the future."
Pan Am never got a fair shot at future bookings. Nobody checks into a hotel that has a wrecking ball outside. And savvy travel agents are disinclined to book round trips to Rio on what some think might be a failing airline.
Moreover, Delta's Atlanta-based managers, in deciding that Pan Am is worth more dead and dismantled than alive and flying, undervalued Pan Am's "franchise" in Latin America. The region's reviving economy and its strong links to Miami promised better days ahead had Pan Am survived.
Granted, blaming Delta alone for Pan Am's demise would be unfair. Pan Am's earlier management left a trail of bad decisions. Even so, it was Delta that intervened at the pivotal moment, when Pan Am still might have been saved. It was Delta that picked Pan Am's cherries for itself. It was Delta that, having promised to nurture the withered tree, chopped it down instead.
In the long and sordid history of corporate double-crosses, Delta has earned a chapter, if not a whole book. In an anguished, futile letter to Bankruptcy Judge Cornelius Blackshear, the lawyer for the Pan Am Creditors Committee, Leon Marcus, described Delta's conduct succinctly:
"They love to lie and it shows!"

_____________________________

CAPTAIN MARK PYLE FLEW PAN AM'S LAST SCHEDULED FLIGHT FROM BARBADOS TO MIAMI ON DECEMBER 4TH, 1991 PILOTING A BOEING 727-200 NAMED "CLIPPER GOODWILL". I'D LIKE TO QUOTE FROM CAPTAIN PYLE HIS RECOLLECTION OF THAT FATEFUL DAY: "When they said it's over, this was something that we had prepared for years at Pan Am. Anyway, in my case it had been eleven years that my family had wondered from month to month how long the airline would last (after the merger with National Airlines). And even though emotionally I was mentally prepared, I found myself emotionally unprepared as I'm sure everybody else did. But we were overwhelmed with the sense of loss, and the ladies on the flight--the Flight Attendants were overwhelmed with a sense of grief--almost immediately tearful. Everyone with their own thoughts--private thoughts. Mine of course ran the full gamut from, 'Wow! It really happened', even though we knew it would and finally did to 'Where do you go?', 'What do you do?'---and all the way to the sense of enormous loss and a historical airline like Pan American was allowed to fall into the abyss. And then as we approached Miami of course we were told by the company radio frequency that we used ---"PAN OP"--we called it--our operations people told us that we were the last ones. And at first I thought 'they must be joking'! Someone, one of my friends had landed before I did--just making some kind of a joke of the day. And then my engineer assured me and with tears in his eyes that we were the last flight. And the tower said 'Could you do a low pass?' Well, I haven't done that since the Navy, so to me this was fun if nothing else--one last fun with the airplane. So, having briefed the passengers so they would know what to expect we flew down Runway 12--Runway One-Two at about a hundred feet and with flaps at 15 (degrees) and about a hundred and eighty knots, nothing too spectacular. I would have liked to come in at two-hundred and fifty and smoked the other side of the runway. But I didn't want any fear amongst the people--any more than they would have to have. So, we just did a very easy non-chalant low pass and over the field, pulled up and came back around for a landing. And I think that all of us in the cockpit were doing fairly well with our emotions until we saw the fire trucks lined up and the Emergency vehicles and the Pan Am ground crew people and the airport personnel and policemen and everyone else lined up to greet the airplane. And in my own case, I had no tears, although certainly emotionally shell-shocked. No tears, until they fired the water canons over the airplane in a final salute to everyone that had ever flown in a Pan Am airplane as far as I was concerned. At that moment our crew represented everybody who had ever flown in this uniform, and in these "Clipper Ships". And I don't mind telling you, at that moment it was difficult to get to the gate --and everybody in the cockpit had 'smoke in our eyes'--I guess that's a macho term for what happened and I said 'Guys, just don't let me ding the wing tip, help me get this thing to the gate' because I couldn't see very well. Quite emotional. And probably will remain etched in my memory for a long time I would think".

________________________

TOMORROW'S FINAL POST ON THIS STORY WILL INCLUDE A FEW POINGANT RECOLLECTIONS FROM THE PEOPLE OF PAN AMERICAN WORLD AIRWAYS. PLEASE JOIN US!