Pan Am clipper, "Special Report", 1977

              A Pan Am Clipper special report

the first
50 YEARS OF PAN AM
The Story of Pan American^

Une. from 1927 to 1977
On October 28,1977 Pan Am
U celebrate its
\vi
airline has
no
done before
everuv^iv	-
And you can be aboard!

CMtcia1 Gmmenrarative of the S^Aitniveisarv oí char^A.Í.mdbeí^hs Newark to Paris Flight
flight 'ofthe FoheEagle
P
rcssKit

How we celebrated
our 50th
It was a lot more than a company birthday party. Pan Am’s golden anniversary was an historic occasion.


1977. It was the year we commemorated an event that changed the world: Pan Am’s first flight on October 28,	1927, the first
scheduled international flight by an American airline.
1977. It was a time to remind the world that since that first flight 50 years ago, Pan Am has played a leading role in every important advance in international aviation—and that Pan Am, more than any other airline, has made possible the swift, reliable, low cost air transportation the traveling public enjoys today.
That's whai we were reaily celebrating: a half century of progress, 50 exciting years in which Pan Am opened up the world for everyone who ever wanted to go places— and grew from what Pan Am President F.C. Wiser recently described as a tiny airline “with one airplane, damn little money and a lot of guts” to a worldwide organization with a fleet of 98 jet aircraft serving 92 cities on six continents.
The Lindbergh Anniversary
We started by observing another important date: May 20, 1977— the 50th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s New York to Paris flight. Lindbergh, whose solo crossing of the Atlantic must have inspired Pan Am’s founder, 28-year-old Juan Terry Trippe, as he planned his own first overwater flight, joined Pan Am in 1928 and was associated with the company for more than 45 years. It was appropriate, therefore, for us to make the 50th anniversary of his achievement part of our celebration.
On the morning of May 20, before a large crowd of well-wishers at New York’s Kennedy Airport, Mrs. Anne Morrow Lindbergh christened a new Pan Am .747SP “Clipper Lindbergh”.
A special limited edition Lindbergh commemorative, with a first-day-of-issue “Spirit of St. Louis” stamp, was issued. Accompanying it was a new account of the flight, “Flight of the Lone Eagle”. Wrote Pan Am Chairman William T. Seawell in a message at the end: “Pan American World Airways, Inc., which is celebrating its own anniversary this year, joins countless millions of people all over the world in saluting the memory of a
great aviator... and a good friend.”
Press Kit
In June a special anniversary press kit was released to more than 3,000 newspapers, magazines, wire services and radio and television stations around the world.
Included in the kit were a 13-page history of Pan Am; a set of photographs of Pan Am planes flown through the years, from the early trimotors and flying boats to the 747SP; “Pan Am At a Glance”, a summary of what the company is today; and other items pertaining to the anniversary.
Publicizing Our History
Probably no corporation has a history as colorful and crowded with achievements as Pan Am’s. A major anniversary activity, therefore, was communicating our history to as many people as possible.
“The First 50 Years of Pan Am”, a 36-page booklet that traces the history of the company from its beginnings to today, was completed in September. Half a million copies were distributed—including one to every Pan Am passenger during October.
A new 12-minute film, “The Pan Am Story”, was produced. Available in seven different languages, it was sent to Pan Am offices worldwide and shown on every movie flight in October.
A poster which reproduced in full color 11 of artist Jack McCoy’s paintings of famous Pan Am aircraft became a collector’s item as soon as it came off the press. Blow-ups of the same pictures, along with a 30-foot banner, were displayed in the lobby of the Pan Am Building in New York for a 4-week period. They were seen by an estimated 20,000 people daily.
Flight 50
Climax of our anniversary activities was the spectacular, onetime-only polar Flight 50. On October 28, a Pan Am 747SP, specially named “Clipper New Horizons”, took off from San Francisco with 172 passengers aboard and flew around the world over both the North and South Poles. It was the first passenger flight ever to attempt this route, and it slashed eight hours off the record set in 1965 by a converted 707 cargo plane.