Classroom clipper, Vol. XIX, No. 4, April - May 1963

              April - May 1 963
Published by Pan American Airways
Vol. XXX, No. 4
4SCHOOL OF THE AIR’ HAS GLOBAL CAMPUS
Not found in any list of educational institutions is a unique “University of the Air” which has campuses all over the world and a 19,000 member student body which is promoted but never graduates.
These perennial pupils are employees of Pan American Airways. They consist of pilots, flight engineers, stewardesses, mechanics, and traffic, sales, ground operations and commissary personnel. No one is exempt, whether a newly hired clerk, a junior flight crewman, the captain of a Jet Clipper or a veteran sales executive.
These men and women undergo training in formal classrooms in the United States or abroad, in elaborate electronic duplicates of aircraft sections at various airports in this country or “on the job” at sales offices and airline terminals throughout the world.
100 ON FACULTY
In a program which has been broadened to keep pace with the growth of international airline traffic, Pan American’s training establishment has developed into a multi-million-dollar program. Its “faculty” numbers about 100 full-time instructors. Its “laboratory” items range from manuals and motion pictures to full-scale replicas of sections of jet airliners—one equipped with closed-circuit television.
Of Pan American’s dozens of training aids, the most intricate are electronic flight simulators costing $800,000. These replicas of aircraft flight decks can simulate every condition of flight without leaving the ground. Basically designed to develop crew coordination, the simulators also enable pilots and flight engineers to practice meeting emergency conditions without risking a plane in flight.
‘CABIN’ ON GROUND
Laboratory work for Pan American stewardesses is given in full-size reproductions of a Clipper galley and passenger cabin. Stewardesses practice preparing and serving meals under conditions identical to those in flight. Units are in use in flight service training quarters in New York, San Francisco, Miami and Seattle.
In the New York mockup, instructors and stewardesses perform their galley duties under the eye of a television camera. The action is projected on a screen in the pas-
senger compartment, permitting trainees there to observe the entire food service operation, from preparation in the galley to serving in the cabin.
MILES OF FILMS
Motion pictures are employed in all the training programs. The largest component, the traffic and sales program, uses 21 motion pictures, each of approximately 20 minutes duration, 35 shorter films, 35 film clips and 11 slide films. Many volumes of written material are also used in the programs.
Typical of the Pan American policy of perpetual training for all employees who participate directly in operations or come in contact with the public is the pilot training program.
This program begins when junior pilots
join the airline and continues through their checkout as captains—and is not over even then. Even as a jet skipper, holding the highest rating in commercial aviation, the captain must pass periodically before the eye of a check pilot to insure that he has lost none of his proficiency.
When hired by Pan American, potential Clipper captains already must be qualified as junior pilots and enter a Pan Am ground school to undergo training given by professional flight instructors before being assigned to flight duty.
For the first four weeks of their Pan American career, future stewardesses get no nearer flight than the mockup of a Clipper passenger compartment in an airport building. There they learn to prepare and serve meals. In
CLASSROOM . . . Latest teaching techniques are used to train ground personnel in Pan Am’s never-ending program of instruction.