THE INTERVIEW: REMEMBERING PAN AM: ED TRIPPE!

Luxury with the "Spiral Staircase" & a Downstairs Lounge!

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Ed Trippe, son of Pan Am's visionary founder Juan Trippe, graduated from Harvard Business School in 1967. The Pan Am that Ed Trippe grew up around mirrored his father's creation of what could be arguably considered a masterpiece mosaic of businesses, including the Guided Missile Range Division (later renamed Pan Am World Services); a 50% stake in Falcon Jet (a Business Jet Sales Division, which starting in 1963 placed substantial orders for the Dassault Mystere' 20. This biz-jet was distributed in the Western Hemisphere as the 'Fan Jet Falcon'-- a name later altered to 'Falcon 20' by Falcon Jet Corporation); Pan Am also provided airport maintenance and fuel services to its customers; the 60-story Pan Am Building in New York; the Atlantic, Pacific, Latin American and Caribbean route systems; equity positions in over 30 airline companies worldwide; an equity stake in New York Airways helicopter service (which ferried Pan Am passengers from the helipad on Pan Am's New York building, in downtown Manhattan, to JFK International Airport,(from 1965-1977); and Pan Am's Inter-Continental Hotel chain subsidiary that spanned 37 countries on five continents!

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MM: Ed, can you describe what it was like for you growing up around Pan Am?

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TRIPPE: In hindsight, it was sort of always there. It was such an enormous institution. For the country, it was always such a constant factor in life, part of the fabric of this country. The fact that it isn't here today is just incredible because it seemed at the time that it would be there as long as the US government was there. And very much part of our family too.

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MM: Are you able to share some memories of your father, Juan Trippe with us?

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TRIPPE: He was obviously very forceful, very quiet and very shy. But a presence in a strong but quiet way. Charles Lindbergh was often a guest in the house, at dinner. With people like that, stories of the old days were constantly there, and many dinner conversations discussed the Twenties and Thirties. The flying boats and those stories were intriguing. And the photographs and the movies. My mother (Betty Stettinius Trippe; 1904-1982) was an avid photographer and she made really wonderful movies and stills (and wrote Pan Am's First Lady: The Diary of Betty Stettinius Trippe, republished by Paladwr Press, 1997).

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MM: Your brother Charles Trippe had a management role at Pan Am overseeing the helicopter service. Were you involved with Pan Am yourself?

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TRIPPE: I went to business school and got out of Harvard in '67. I got a job with Pan Am as Military Traffic Manager in Saigon and worked for the company there in '67 and '68. Then I joined Inter-Continental.

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MM: Pan Am provided so many of the R&R (Rest and Relaxation) flights for American troops station in Vietnam?

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TRIPPE: (For) Pan Am, Tan Son Nhut (in Saigon) was the second busiest airport outside JFK at the time, often having ten Boeing 707's on the ground simultaneously. There were two passenger flights coming eastbound and something else coming south and west.

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MM: What fond memories of Pan Am stand out for you?

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TRIPPE: Some early memories of taking a delivery flight of a (Boeing) Stratocruiser to Bermuda and having the whole plane to ourselves. The Stratocruiser sticks out, because at the time it was such an enormous, beautiful plane. My first ride on the 747 was an absolutely memorable experience. Just the size of that airplane lumbering down the runway, and wondering 'Is this going to lift off or what?' I wasn't on the inaugural flight, but I was on one of the early ones. Just so exciting, and the first jets were...well, the pride in Dad's voice when he told me the night before... the announcement of the first jet order because he wanted me to hear about it rather than read about it in the paper the next day, because it was obviously a huge announcement.

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MM: Do you ever wonder what your father would have thought about today's deregulated environment, which started towards the end of his life?

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TRIPPE: He grew Pan Am at a time when the relationship with government was basically good---to a point. But deregulation wasn't a part of his life. Obviously I think the timing of the acquisition of National Airlines could not have been worse. Pan Am paid a fortune and went through an enormous digestion of National that it didn't need to. If deregulation would have happened earlier, Pan Am would have been much better off. All the domestic services would have been available.

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MM: Are you pleased with The Pan Am Historical Foundation?

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TRIPPE: We founded it at the time because the archives and memorabilia were about to be lost. It was absolutely critical that we salvaged it. The purpose of the Foundation is to perpetuate the legacy of the company. We have been unable to complete a documentary film and that, I guess is the biggest frustration we've had. There's a wonderful story to be told on a number of levels.

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Author's note: My personal thanks to Ed Trippe for taking time from his hectic schedule to sit down with me.