Juan

MY COMPANY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Pan American Airways Incorporated was founded on March 14, 1927, by Major Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and partners. Their shell company was able to obtain the U.S. mail delivery contract to Cuba, but lacked the physical assets to do the job. A few months later, on June 2, 1927, Juan Trippe formed the Aviation Corporation of America with the backing of powerful and politically-connected financiers William A. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, and others; Whitney served as the company's president. Their operation had the all-important landing rights for Havana, having acquired a small airline established in 1926 by John K. Montgomery and Richard B. Bevier as a seaplane service from Key West, Florida to Havana. The Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean Airways company was established on October 11, 1927, by New York City investment banker Richard Hoyt, who served as president. The three companies merged into a holding company called the Aviation Corporation of the Americas on June 23, 1928. Richard Hoyt was named as chairman of the new company, but Trippe and his partners held forty percent of the equity and Whitney was made president. Trippe became the operational head of the new Pan American Airways Incorporated, created as the primary operating subsidiary of Aviation Corporation of the Americas.The U.S. government had approved the original Pan Am's mail delivery contract with little objection, out of fears that the German-owned Colombian carrier SCADTA would have no competition in bidding for routes between Latin America and the United States. The government further helped Pan Am by insulating it from its American competitors, seeing the airline as the "chosen instrument" for U.S. foreign air routes.[2] The airline expanded, due in part to its virtual monopoly on foreign airmail contracts. Pan Am's seaplane terminal at Dinner Key in Miami, Florida, was a hub of inter-American travel during the 1930s and 1940s.Trippe and his associates planned to extend Pan Am's network through all of Central and South America. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Pan Am purchased a number of ailing or defunct airlines in Central and South America, and negotiated with postal officials to win most of the government's airmail contracts to the region. In September 1929, Trippe toured Latin America with Charles Lindbergh to negotiate landing rights in a number of countries, including SCADTA's home turf of Colombia. By the end of the year, Pan Am offered flights down the west coast of South America to Peru. The following year, Pan Am purchased the New York, Rio, and Buenos Aires Line (NYRBA), giving it a seaplane route along the east coast of South America to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and westbound to Santiago, Chile.Pan Am's holding company, the Aviation Corporation of the Americas, was one of the hottest stocks on the New York Curb Exchange in 1929, and flurries of speculation surrounded each of its new route awards. On a single day in March, its stock rose 50% in value. Trippe and his associates had to fight off a takeover attempt by the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation to keep their control over Pan Am (UATC was the parent company of what are now Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, and United Airlines).Pan Am II A new investment group including Charles Cobb, the former Ambassador to Iceland, purchased the rights to the Pan American brand after the original carrier declared bankruptcy. In September 1996, Pan Am II was started with an Airbus A300 named the Clipper Fairwind. The goal was to provide low-cost, long-distance travel to major U.S. and Caribbean cities. The new airline was led by the last Vice Chairman and Chief Operations Officer of Pan Am, Marty Shugrue, who also helped in the creation of the Frequent Flyer program and who served as President of American Airlines and later trustee of the Eastern Airlines estate. Pan Am II soon merged with the troubled Carnival Airlines, but the rapid expansion and economic troubles of the two companies were too much for the new Pan Am II—it only survived for two years before declaring bankruptcy. Pan Am II ceased operations in 1998.[edit] Pan Am III In 1998, the Pan Am brand was sold to Guilford Transportation Industries, a railroad company headed by Tim Mellon of the Pittsburgh banking family. Guilford launched Pan American Airlines with a fleet of seven Boeing 727s. The third incarnation flew to nine cities in New England, Florida, the Canadian Maritimes and Puerto Rico. The focus was on secondary airports such as Orlando Sanford International Airport instead of Orlando International Airport, and Pease International Airport and Worcester Regional Airport instead of the crowded Logan International Airport in the Boston area. Pan Am later had cooperative service arrangements with Boston-Maine Airways.Guilford ceased operating Pan Am on November 1, 2004, but operations were transferred to Boston-Maine Airways, which resumed 727 service under the Pan Am "Clipper Connection" name from February 17, 2005. In August 2005, a federal investigation into fraudulent financial data submitted by Boston-Maine Airways halted Pan Am's plans to expand its fleet and route system. At the same time, the airline pilot union had claimed that the airline was unfit to operate and urged the Department of Transportation to deny the airline's certification for expansion.[14] The airline later announced that it was suspending service from September 6 to November 16, citing rising fuel costs and decreased levels of booking.[15] In mid-October 2005, the airline suspended 727 flights indefinitely from several airports that it served, including its home base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.[16]