Traffic & sales clipper, Vol. 8, No. 17, October 1950

              Traffic & Sales
nmy
VOL. 2, NO. 17
NEW YORK 17, N. Y.
OCTOBER, 1950
PAA Begins Service on New Routes
34,000 Atlantic Crossings
PAA first crossed the Atlantic in 1939. Through the PA A-AO A merger the combined airlines have 13 years of Atlantic operations behind them with 33,925 crossings for a total of 118,737,000 miles, equivalent to 494 trips to the moon.
The acquisition of AOA will add 2,502 route miles to PAA’s Atlantic network which includes, besides Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India, making the entire division’s route mileage 21,451. It also brings PAA service for the first time to ten cities— Prestwick, Amsterdam, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo, Hamburg and Keflavik. Seven new countries will be served: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Scotland and the Netherlands. Rome and Paris will be added when the governments concerned have given permission.
It is planned to serve London with 21 round trips weekly. Frankfurt will have eleven round trips and Brussels four. Prestwick, Stockholm and Amsterdam and Helsinki will be served three times weekly, Copenhagen twice and Oslo once. Düsseldorf will have two round trip flights a week and Hamburg seven.
PAA will continue to serve the Middle Atlantic with four flights a week serving Lisbon and two weekly flights to Barcelona, Marseilles and Nice.
Air Transport Listed As Essential Industry For Draft Deferments
Among the list of essential industries and critical occupations listed by the departments of Commerce and Labor is that of “Transportation by Air,” which played such an important part as our second line of national defense in World War II and the Korean conflict. So that all PAA personnel may be advised of the procedure followed in the matter of occupational deferments of members of the Army, Navy and Air Force Reserves and the National Guard as recently announced by the Department of Defense, the following information is reported.
Fundamentally, the reservist deferred must be engaged in a critical occupation necessary to a highly essential activity and deferred only until he can be satisfactorily replaced in that occupation. A delay (Continued on Page 3, Col. 3)
AIRLINE LUXURY FOR GIs: GI’s bound for the Korean war zone board a PAA Clipper with rifles, helmets, canteens, and cartridge belts for a fast flight from the West Coast in the world’s longest airlift. The GI passengers received the same accommodations, complete with stewardesses, as civilian travelers on the airline’s de luxe runs to Hawaii and the Orient.
Korean Airlift Starts
Phasing Out Program
A general “phasing out” of commercial charter operations in the Korean airlift ordered by the Military Air Transport Service will bring about the gradual return of all PAA aircraft and will call for additional selling efforts on the part of all sales offices in pushing the Pacific-Alaska Division’s quota for sales in 1950.
Recognized as an important part of the country’s second line of national defense, PAA as one of prime contractors assembled a
fleet of 24 aircraft for a special airlift to the Far East from seven domestic and international airlines and from its own fleet. This aircraft pool made up more than half of the total scheduled airline fleet of 45 airplanes assigned to the Korean airlift.
Complete crews including pilots, co-pilots and navigators were assigned with each plane by the subcontracting carriers bringing utilization of each aircraft up to as much as 14 hours a day. Twenty-year PAA veteran Basil Rowe, who holds the world’s record for hours in the air, headed the assignment of crews.
Another of PAA’s top captains, Henry C. Kristofferson, PAD’s former operations manager, was ordered to active duty as a Brigadier General with the Air Force reporting to Andrews Field, Camp Springs, Md. He was later assigned to Fair-field-Suisan Air base, where he commanded the civilian portion of the lift.
PAA experience for such an important undertaking in the Pacific dates back to July, 1931, when Colonel Lindbergh, then PAA’s technical advisor, made a survey flight
over a course approximating the Great Circle course, New York to the Orient by way of Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and the Kurile Islands to Japan. In a report made by Mrs. Lindbergh, she said in part, “But why the Orient. What led to the Orient? Our immediate answer to such a question would be the indisputable importance of future air routes between America and Japan, China and Siberia.”
Following the successful completion of Colonel Lindbergh’s flight in 1931, PAA took up the problem of securing the necessary concessions from the Soviet Union for the establishment of the North Pacific route. However, Soviet officials took the position that since the United States did not recognize the Government of the Soviet Union, the necessary operating rights could not be obtained.
Distinguished explorer, scientist and author, Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefans-son, in collaboration with PAA, conducted numerous expeditions to the Arctic area in early 1932 and 1933 (Continued on Page 4, Col. 2)
Merger Comes Off
In Smooth Transition
When Pan American World Airways’ Vice President Friendly handed a check for $17,450,000 to American Overseas Airlines at 15 Exchange Place, Jersey City, N. J., on September 25, the two lines were officially merged. The merger will require filling of seats representing an increase of 44 per cent for October, 1950, or 22 million seat miles over the same period for last year.
Selling efforts will now have to be intensified by all offices in order to net top advantage of these new markets. European sales particularly will have to exert every effort to seH these additional outlets.
The combined experience of 1,328 AOA employees, all of whom are experienced airline personnel and some of whom have been with the company since it started operations as American Export Airlines in 1942, will assist the sales effort necessary to fill these additional seats.
Although the welding together has involved 3,902 people, 21,451 route miles, 46 airplanes, 35,000 parts and! almost two years’ time, the transition was so smooth that the passengers didn’t even know it had taken place until they were informed.
The greatest tangible asset coming: to the company from the merger was; the addition of 18 airplanes to the Atlantic fleet, which formerly totalled 28 aircraft. The merger brought eight “Strato” Clippers, seven Constellations and three DC-43, to make a total of 46 aircraft valued at about $47,000,000.
Adding 18 AOA aircraft to the Pan American Clipper fleet brings the total Pan American World Airways fleet to 144 Clippers of all types.
The sale of the assets of American Overseas to Pan American embraces thousands of items ranging in value from three cent stamps to $1,500,000 double-deck Boeing Stratocruisers.
The classifying and cataloguing of some 35,000 parts ranging from an engine to a spoon was one of the most difficult tasks accomplished by both lines. Some 7,500 aircraft parts, 800 engine parts and 2,000 engine accessories were accounted for at New York alone.
Immediately after the check was passed, telephone, radio and telegraph orders went out to 16 stations operated by American Overseas in the United States and 14 foreign countries and to the captains of four AOA Flagships in midair across the Atlantic to “proceed to close,” a legal term meaning complete the transaction.
(Continued on Page 2, Col. 4)