Pan American World Airways, commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991. 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, jumbo jets, and computerized reservation systems. 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 was a cultural icon of the 20th century. In an era dominated by flag carriers that were wholly or majority government-owned, it was also the unofficial flag carrier of the United States. During most of the jet era, Pan Am's flagship terminal was the Worldport located at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
Read more about Pan American World Airways: Reuse of Name, Record-setting Flights, In Popular Culture, Acquisitions and Divestitures, Accidents and Incidents
Famous quotes containing the words pan, american and/or world:
“I don’t pan out on the prophets
An’ free-will, an’ that sort of thing—
But I b’lieve in God an’ the angels,
Ever sence one night last spring.”
—John Milton Hay (1838–1905)
“What a terrible thing has happened to us all! To you there, to us here, to all everywhere. Peace who was becoming bright-eyed, now sits in the shadow of death; her handsome champion has been killed as he walked by her very side. Her gallant boy is dead. What a cruel, foul, and most unnatural murder! We mourn here with you, poor, sad American people.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her, but she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road after things.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)