Pan American clipper, Vol. 5, No. 33, December 31, 1946

              Volume 5	December 31, 1946	Number 33
Typical Eastbound Clipper Traveler Loses His Shirt and Several Pounds
The American transatlantic air traveler sheds not only poundage but his shirt these days while visiting Europe.
This conclusion is based on a study by Pan American Airways of 32,000 passengers who have Clippered over the Atlantic since October, 1945.
Statistics indicate that John Q. Traveler weighs 164 pounds when he takes off from La Guardia Field, but finds that food rationing in the European countries slims down that executive bulge at the waistline which brings him home a few pounds lighter, much to the envy of his friends.
Happy, too, are his relatives in those countries where clothing is still bought with coupons.	~
One of Uncle John’s Fifth Avenue tailored shirts - with collar and cuffs unfrayed — must look well with a suit of 1939 vintage, because the returnee’s baggage weighs less than the 50 pounds that he toted up to the departure gate.
Mrs. Air Traveler takes the food rap also.
She has dropped a few pounds from the 134
rital she handed in when preparing for depar-Ire. Study reveals, however, that her wardrobe emains more or less intact.
Mr.
Hungry Travelers
and Mrs. Traveler evidently liked to
move on a full stomach, like Napoleon’s army. They put away at least one full meal while en route plus lunch, breakfast and a bumper crop of snacks. The pretty stewardesses, who walked
15.000	miles up and down the aisles, poured
6.000	gallons of coffee into the cups of the thirsty passengers.
Drinking liquor above the clouds is limited to one out of six voyagers — and they are mostly scotch devotees. But the consumption of chewing gum while aloft ran into over a million pieces.
With fast-moving land planes now following the routes blazed by the 42-ton flying boats, college professors, ranchers, lumberjacks, housewives and small businessmen have replaced the generals, admirals, A-bomb scientists and war correspondents who in the grim war days formed the high-priorities corps of VIPS moved by Clipper.
Fare reductions as high as $400 meant that many people could return home after war-exiled years. Thoughts of Sussex in the spring, heather of the Scottish countryside, a cottage in the mountains of Wales attracted approximately 5,200 to London Airport, while horse-fairs, peat-fires and trout streams drew another 3,000 to homes in Ireland, either to visit the old folks or tend to family affairs.
Big Shots and Little
i Celebrities still are carried, but run to an verage of one to every ten passengers aboard "the Clipper. Children under six are more easily counted than millionaires, running to about four per cent of the total passenger lists.
Transatlantic Clippers have run up an air mileage equal to 187 fast turns around the (Continued on page 2)
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Johnson Named
Sales Manager
Owen F. Johnson, who this month, begins his twelfth year with Pan American, has been appointed Atlantic Division sales manager.
A native of Nebraska, Mr. Johnson was graduated from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and the Lincoln School of Commerce. Going | west to California he attended the Boeing School of Aeronautics at Oakland, then joined Pan American on the west coast, on Friday, the 13th of December, 1935, as a truck driver.
When Pan American inaugurated its passenger-carrying service across the Pacific in 1937, Mr. Johnson became a reservations clerk. Soon afterward he was transferred to Honolulu as sales representative, then to Manila, where he remained for two years. In 1940 he went to Hongkong to succeed Phil S. Delany as sales representative for China. In this job he was PAA’s representative handling sales and passengers for CNAC, Pan American’s affiliate.
In May, 1941, when PAA’s Manila-Singapore extension was opened, Mr. Johnson transferred to Singapore as District sales manager there. Having completed four years of foreign service, he left Singapore in November, 1941 to return home for a vacation. He was on the next to last Clipper to reach the United States before war broke out.
Moving to New York, Mr. Johnson was named assistant to Vice President H. M. Bixby, assigned to liaison with CNAC. Later he became assistant to Vice President D. S. Ingalls. On December 1 he took over his new job with the Atlantic Division.
Mr. and Mrs. Johnson live in White Plains with their two children, Jeffrey, aged 5, and Christine, who is just seven weeks old.
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Breitmeyer is Top Imagineer
Henry Breitmeyer of the electrical shop was honored as the Atlantic Division’s foremost “imagineer” for 1946 at the third annual award dinner held last evening in the Hawk’s Nest. Mr. Breitmeyer received a special award of $100 for the outstanding suggestion of the year, plus a $-10 third prize.
Salvatore T. Vicale of maintenance training, and Robert Brooks, formerly of ground opera* tions, each received second prizes of $50; and a total of 10 awards of $10 were made. Presentations were made by John C. Ward, chairman of the Employes Suggestion Committee.
The dinner meeting, attended by 50 persons, opened with a colored movie entitled “The Parade of Progress.” James II. Smith, Jr., vice president in charge of the Atlantic Division, and Donald O. Q. Lamp-land, senior staff engineer, spoke briefly following the dinner, and Captain C. E. Vaughn presided as
Captain Vaughn toastmaster.
Mr. Breitmeyer, whose three earlier awards from the suggestion committee in 1946 totaled $835, received the $100 prize for h is suggestion that the General*Electric motor generators be made to do double duty by furnishing power to the aircraft and also, by reconnecting the wiring, to check out the generator systems of DC-4 and L-49 aircraft. He originally received $500 for this suggestion.
S. T. Vicale Electrical System Improved
Mr. Breitmeyer’s second year-end prize was in recognition of his suggestion to improve the electrical system of the Maxson ovens used aboard Constellations. He had received $300 for .this idea originally.
Mr. Vicale, who rated second among the Division’s “imagineers,” was rewarded for designing an instrument testing unit capable of performing tests formerly requiring a variety of instruments. HiS original award was $500, and he made a tour of the line stations to dem-(Continued on page 4)