Pan Am clipper, Vol. 7, No. 2, February 1981

              Seawell: “life’ll be among the best”
Pan Am’s problems can and will be solved, Chairman William T. Seawell told a meeting of Pan Am sales personnel in Rye, New York.
Performance has slipped below acceptable levels, he said, and our primary objective will be a return to superior standards.
The Chairman announced a major realignment of senior management, and set firm goals for 1981.
Revenue is needed — no less than $4 billion in 1981.
Performance must be reinforced by improved communications at every level, the Chairman stressed.
Seawell affirmed that corrective action has been and will be taken to improve on-time performance, res-
ervations and passenger handling. “We have not recovered, but we have passed the nadir,” Seawell said.
Despite the difficulties facing Pan Am, Seawell was optimistic, saying that the problems were clearly solvable and that the realigned managment team would provide the help needed to return the airline to professional and efficient service.
Seawell pointed out that Pan Am was operating in an “abysmal” business environment, with both U.S. and international carriers
measuring their total losses in the billions of dollars.
He stressed that the Pan Am/ National merger had been essential to the survival of both companies and rejected the premise that Pan Am could have continued alone as an international carrier. “It would have only been a matter of time before international expansion by domestic airlines eroded our position,” he said.
Seawell acknowledged that employees had performed in 1980 under the most trying circum-
stances—circumstances that will be corrected. He predicted an upswing in performance by early spring.
“We have an opportunity to demonstrate the combined strengths of the two systems. We will not be a shoddy airline. We will be among the best.”
• • •
Chairman Seawell has announced a major realignment of key senior management positions and expanded the responsibilities of several executives.
Seawell said J. Kenneth Kilcarr,
executive vice president Finance, will place special emphasis in the areas of financial control and will have the additional responsibility for profit planning.
William H. Waltrip, executive vice president Marketing and Planning, will have the responsibility for the entire planning spectrum of the airline — from the product to corporate.
In day-to-day operations, senior management who will now report directly to Seawell include:
—John B. Andersen, senior vice president Sales and Service. Andersen was formerly vice president Field Sales and Service.
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Hitting the road to promote Pan Am’s China service are flight attendants Denise Tung (top), Yu Lu (center) and Flight Service Supervisor Kathy Fong (bottom). The New York-based trio toured 18 cities, discussing travel to China with local news media.
Fatigue-fighting seats outclass our competition
Pan Am will meet the competition head-on with Clipper Class Service that soars ahead of the rest of the industry.
Hallmark of the service is the new Clipper Class seat, located in a separate, dedicated cabin. The seats are designed to fight the number-one enemy of the international business traveler: fatigue.
Says Walter J. Rauscher, vice president Passenger Sales, “We had Dr. Jay O’Brien, one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the U.S. go
through every phase of the construction of this seat. He’s written that this is as fine a seat as can be designed from a fatigue-fighting point of view.
“The biggest problem our 747 and SP passengers face is fatigue. Traveling long distances, the kind of seat you sit in makes all the difference. These are absolutely superb seats.”
What about TWA’s recent introduction of First Class seats in its continued on page 2
China’s ready, says travel team
With the stage set for inauguration of Pan Am’s new China service on Jan. 28, a four-member flight service team hit the road on a special media promotional tour.
Armed with press kits, photographs and slides, the “China Road Show” team appeared on television and radio and gave newspaper interviews in nearly a dozen states from New York to Michigan telling viewers, listeners and readers about the new travel frontier of the People’s Republic of China.
Included in the road show team were flight attendants Yu Lu and Denise Tung, both New York-based, and Flight Service Supervisors Kathy Fong, from New York, and Elaine Fong, from San Francisco.
While most of the interview questions routinely focused on tourism in China such as, “How do I get to Beijing?” or “What makes the Great Wall so great?” there were a few off-
the-wall inquiries.
For example, a television news anchorman in Indianapolis asked Yu Lu to give an on-camera demonstration on the proper use of chopsticks and, in Connecticut, a reporter asked: “Just how easy is it to get a taxi in Tiananmen Square in Beijing?” (Not very. A bus, yes; a taxi, more difficult.)
In January, the China Road Show team visited Livingston, Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey; Manchester and Hartford, Connecticut; Albany, Buffalo, New Rochelle, Rochester and Syracuse, New York; Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Detroit and Flint, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The last stop on the team’s tour, Pittsburgh, coincided with the inauguration of the first regularly scheduled service to the People’s Republic. . .Flight 15 which flew
from JFK Airport in New York to Beijing (Peking) by way of Tokyo.
The 747SP jetliner making the inaugural flight was “China Clipper,” aircraft N540PA, the same long-range jumbo that operated the pre-inauguaral flight to Beijing last Dec. 6.
On Feb. 2, a second weekly Pan Am flight to China was scheduled to depart San Francisco and fly to Beijing by way of Tokyo and Shanghai. On April 26, another San Francisco-China flight is scheduled ... bringing to three the number of weekly flights Pan Am will operate between the United States and the PRC.
Meanwhile, CAAC, the airline of the People’s Republic, began once-a-week 747SP service from China to the U.S. on Jan. 7. The CAAC flight operates to both San Francisco and New York. □
—James A. A rep
Super sales meeting shapes tomorrow’s goals
upbeat message — achievement, flashed across a wide screen to the tune of the Beatles’ “Success Don’t Come Easy.”
But the real stars of the meeting were the 25 winners of the Presi-
“When nobody sells, a terrible thing happens. . . nothing.”
But there was plenty going on at Pan Am’s first General Sales meeting in Rye, New York.
“Shaping Tomorrow” was the meeting’s theme, and 557 sales personnel gathered from around the System to find out just how that future was shaping up. The agenda included a candid panel discussion by top management, divisional meetings emphasizing local and System-wide problems, and a hardhitting report on the state of the new Pan Am from Chairman William T. Seawell.
The key word was performance, and no one said it better than Chairman Seawell, who set a challenging goal for participants — $4 billion in 1981. Citing a decline in the airline’s recent performance, Seawell pledged a return to superior standards.
Sydney’s Beverly Hunt accepts the President’s Sales Award from Chairman Seawell. Hunt was one of 25 recipients of the award, presented at Pan Am’s first General Sales Meeting, held in January in Rye, New York.
“You can’t reach $4 billion without a reliable product to sell,” Seawell noted.
A vivid audio-visual program kept the conference moving, as its
dent’s Sales Award, honored at a banquet that evening. What makes a winner? “It’s not a personality contest,” says Tim Hapgood, system director passenger sales. “It’s an ob-continued on page 7
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