Pan Am – Personal Tributes to a Global Aviation Pioneer

On 28 October 1927, Pan American Airways was modestly launched with a contract to fly the U.S. Mail from Key West to Havana, Cuba. During 2017, friends and supporters of Pan Am commemorated this landmark event with the publication of a special 90th Anniversary volume that looks back at the history of the airline that helped mold the international commercial airline industry of today.

Pan Am – Personal Tributes to a Global Aviation Pioneer is published by the Pan Am Historical Foundation (PAHF), a 501(c)(3) educational foundation, established in 1992 to preserve and promote the legacy of Pan American World Airways. A true collector’s item, this commemorative hard cover edition measuring ten and a half by twelve and a half inches is an oversize coffee-table hardcover book and features a colorful dust jacket. It contains more than 80 stories written by former Pan Am employees and international media friends who had personal experience with many of Pan Am’s key events during its history.

The anthology recounts the history of Pan Am from its first flight to its very last and is illustrated with more than 300 images, many in full color, from a variety of sources including PAHF’s unique photo library. It also includes posters, promotional brochures, timetables and baggage tags.

This book may very well be one of the best – if not the best – book ever published about Pan Am. Rebecca Maksel, in the respected aviation journal Air & Space, published by the Smithsonian, wrote this about the book:

“Pan Am—Personal Tributes to a Global Aviation Pioneer is just that: An insider’s look at the airline from those who worked there. In addition to a history of Pan Am, the book also includes the esoteric: an interview with artist Milton Hebald, who sculpted the 15-foot bronze signs of the zodiac that graced the façade of the Pan Am building at JFK; a reminiscence from an employee who worked at Pan Am’s Counter Vanderbilt, the largest ticket counter in the world; and a mournful remembrance from a flight attendant who flew aboard the White House press charter the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Readers will learn about flights behind the Iron Curtain and Pan Am rescues of American citizens stranded by wars, revolutions, and earthquakes. The airline even had a waiting list for passengers interested in future trips to the moon.”

ISBN: 978-0-692-82045-2