Clipper, Vol. 3, No. 5, October 1955

              VOL. 3, NO. 5
Published by and for PAA Employees at N. Y. and Washington, D. C. System General Offices
OCTOBER 1955
SEVEN-O-FIVE... PAA'S NEWEST EMPLOYEE ! !
An electronic brain that will process records thirty times as fast as present machinery is the latest accountant to be hired by PAA.
It is IBM’s large-scale electronic data processing unit Type 705. The “brain,” operated from a console-like master unit, will be installed on the 4th floor in the Long Island City offices next Spring; it will be the first such machine in the air transport business. The machine can make 8,400 additions a second and 1,200 multiplications.
“The airline business has grown so much in recent years that we have reached the limit of efficient control with our present accounting machinery,” John S. Woodhridge, Comptroller, said.
“To obtain an idea of the problem faced by Pan American, one has to visualize 10 billion cards. This is the number we machine annually. If laid end to end, they would stretch six times around the world. A jet transport traveling at 550 miles an hour would have to fly continuously for 13 days just to pass over the PAA paper work.”
“One accounting procedure — which now takes 750 machine hours — will be completed in 15 hours,” Mr. Wood-bridge said.
“But perhaps more important, we will be in a position to mine our records for information that it has never before been economically feasible to obtain.”
Provides Sales Information
With Seven-O-Five, the Company will be able to keep a sensitive finger on movements of international trade as reflected in air cargo shipments. Our airwaybills, of course, provide information on shipper, commodity and consignee. Processing 7,000 waybills a day, we have not up to now been able to spot any but the most obvious trends without costly and time-consuming research. Soon we will have the most precise information on where and in what quantities any particular commodity is moving, and we can have it at once. What is the pharmaceutical
trade between Uruguay and all of the rest of the world? Where are the best markets for textiles? The possibilities are endless.
Crew Scheduling Problems
One of the most difficult problems facing an airline is crew scheduling. The Company employs 1,264 pilots to operate 121 airplanes of eight different types over 62,757 route miles connecting the six inhabited continents.
Pilots may only fly an average of 85 hours a month. We want them to fly the maximum; they want to fly as many hours as they are entitled to fly.
We can feed all the variables into the machine. What plane is the pilot qualified to operate? What route has he been checked out on? Where is he physically located at any given moment? Is illness among the pilot group affecting the schedule? What special assignments? How many hours has the pilot already flown?
Our pilots are scheduled out of three bases — New York, Miami and San Francisco. With the use of a transceiver, the information can be fed to the machine by leased wire from any of the bases and almost instantly a list of names will be sent in reply for any sector of the world-wide route system.
Speeds Billing
It now takes PAA about two weeks to present its bills after they fall due. For a substantial part of its business, payment is made as soon as the bill is rendered. This is particularly true of some $49,000,000 worth of business done annually through IATA and ATA
clearing houses. If the Company were to present its bills within 24 hours of the due date instead of two weeks, some $3,000,000 to $4 million less working capital would be required than is now the case.
Provides Precise Control of Inventory
Pan American will be able to rethink its entire program of inventory reserves. We now keep on hand inventories in 110,000 different categories from simple nuts and bolts to whole wing assemblies. With operations scattered on six continents — and with the limitations of present accounting machinery — we maintain a certain level of supplies. In the future, every replacement order will be fed to the machine first, and we will instantly know if there is a surplus anywhere in our system. Such precise control ought to save us millions in inventory alone.
There are many other uses for the machine. It is bound to affect our thinking on reservations control, on processing payrolls, and on how we are selling our product.
The information to be processed by the machine is fed into a magnetic tape 10x/2 inches in diameter. Some 366 file trays containing 1,250,000 cards will fill only 10 reels of tape.
The brain does its work to the accompaniment of flashing lights and a powerful hum. Preparation for the installation of the unit — including the construction of a special room — has been underway for two years. A 14-man team is now planning the final stages of the switchover. The unit rents for $30,000 a month.
PAA first installed IBM equipment in 1930. In 1948, it installed its present equipment, making it the largest user of tabulating machines for accounting purposes in the airline industry and one of the largest users in the world. Since 1948, it has handled the accounting of 11,500,000 passengers and 500,-000,000 pounds of cargo. The volume of passenger sales alone now being processed amounts to $1,400,000 for each working day, double what it was only three years ago.
BLUE SHIELD GIVES GREATER BENEFITS
Increased surgical benefits — at no increase in rates — begin October 1 for subscribers to New York’s Blue Shield Plan.
Increased benefits will be received for surgical care, radiation therapy, electro-shock therapy, consultation care, care of babies from birth.
System office employees interested in joining New York’s Blue Cross Plan or adding surgery to their present contract should make application through the Benefit Plan Section, Personnel, LIC, before October 14, 1955.
Further information about the Blue Shield Plan will be given to employees now in the plan in printed form as soon as it becomes available.
CONGRATULATIONS . . .
Mr. Everett M. Goulard has been named Vice President Industrial Relations of Pan American World Airways, it was announced on September 15th.
Mr. Goulard joined Pan American in 1948 and has been a member of the Industrial Relations department since then. He was elected an Assistant Vice President in June, 1954.
A graduate of Cornell University, Mr. Goulard received his law degree from Harvard in 1937 and has been in industrial relations work since that time.
He served in the Army during World War II and he was discharged with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1946.
Mr. Goulard and his wife, Marion Reed Goulard, live in Darien, Connecticut. They have two children—James, 13, and Sarah, 11. He is the son of Mrs. Thomas Goulard of Summit, New Jersey, and until recently was a resident of Westfield, New Jersey.
One of Mr. Goulard’s favorite sports is tennis. He still holds the title of System General Office Tennis Champion, which he won in the last Tennis Tournament held in 1951.
Everett M. Goulard
NEW YORK-NASSAU SERVICE
Non-stop year-round service between New York and Nassau, offering both tourist and first-class service, was proposed by PAA in exhibits filed with the Civil Aeronautics Board.
The Company offered to operate two flights a day to the island—which would be brought within three and one half hours of New York —during the busy season from December to March. Flights would leave Idlewild Airport each morning, with return flights to be made each afternoon from the island. Extra sections would be operated when traffic warrants them.
Pan American was the first commercial airline to operate to Nassau, having begun service to the island from Miami on January 2,1929.