December 21, 2024

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21st, is the winter solstice and either the shortest or longest day of the year, depending on your hemisphere. It also marks the 36th anniversary of one of history’s most notorious terrorist bombings, the 1988 downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Flight 103, a Boeing 747 named Clipper Maid of Seas, was bound from London to New York when it blew up in the evening sky about a half-hour after takeoff. All 259 passengers and crew were killed, along with eleven people in the town of Lockerbie, where an entire neighborhood was virtually demolished. Debris was scattered over 800 square miles. Until 2001, this was the deadliest-ever terror attack against American civilians. A photograph of the decapitated cockpit and first class section of the 747, lying crushed on its side in a field, became an icon of the disaster, and is perhaps the saddest air crash photo of all time.

The investigation into the bombing — the U.S. prosecutorial team was led by a hard-nosed assistant attorney general named Robert Mueller (yes, that Robert Mueller) was one of the most fascinating and intensive investigations in law enforcement history. Much of the footwork took place on the Mediterranean island of Malta, where the explosive device, hidden inside a Toshiba radio and packed into a suitcase, was assembled and sent on its way. The deadly suitcase traveled first from Malta to Frankfurt, and from there onward to London-Heathrow, where it was loaded into flight 103’s baggage hold.

Among the security enhancements put in place after the bombing is the now familiar requirement that passengers and their checked luggage travel together on the same flight. (“Bag pulls,” as we call them, are a regular occurrence on overseas flights when passengers — but not their bags — miss their connections, often resulting in delays.)

Two Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, were eventually tried in the Netherlands for the bombing. Both had ties to Libyan intelligence and were believed to have carried out the attack under orders of Libyan leader Mohammar Khaddafy. Fhimah was acquitted (a verdict that generated plenty of controversy), but in 2001, eleven years after the incident, al-Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life.

Al-Megrahi and Fhimah also had been employees of Libyan Arab Airlines. Al-Megrahi was in charge of security, and Fhimah was the carrier’s station manager at the Malta airport. During my vacation to the island a few years ago, it was eerie when I found myself walking past the Libyan Airlines ticket office, which is still there, just inside the gate to the old city of Valletta.

In 2009, in a move that has startled the world, Scottish authorities struck a deal with the Libyan government, and al-Megrahi, terminally ill at the time, was allowed to return home, to be with his family in his final days. He was welcomed back as a hero by many.

Then, only two years ago, a third alleged Libyan conspirator, Abu Agila Masud, was apprehended by U.S. authorities and awaits trial on charges that he built the explosive device that destroyed flight 103. The investigation remains open, and it’s possible, if unlikely, that other individuals could someday be held accountable.

There’s lots to read online about flight 103, including many ghastly day-after pictures from Lockerbie. But instead of focusing on the gorier aspects, check out the amazing story of Ken Dornstein, whose brother perished at Lockerbie, and his dogged pursuit of what happened. (Dornstein, like me, is a resident of Somerville, Massachusetts.)

The government of Mohammar Khaddafy was also held responsible for the 1989 destruction of UTA flight 772, a DC-10 bound from Congo to Paris. Few Americans remember this incident, but it has never been forgotten in France (UTA, a globe-spanning carrier based in Paris, was later absorbed by Air France).

A hundred and seventy people were killed when an explosive device went off in the DC-10’s forward luggage hold. The wreckage fell into the Tenere region of the Sahara, in northern Niger, one of the planet’s most remote areas. (Years later, a remarkable memorial, incorporating a section of the plane’s wing, was constructed in the desert where the wreckage landed.)

In exchange for the lifting of sanctions, Khaddafy eventually agreed to blood money settlements for Libya’s hand in both attacks. The UTA agreement doled out a million dollars to each of the families of the 170 victims. More than $2.7 billion was allotted to the Lockerbie next of kin.

Upper photo courtesy of Pan Am Museum.
Second photo by the author.

September 23, 2024

I FOUND THIS LIST, over at The Atlantic, published back in 2015: What Was the Most Significant Airplane Flight in History? A roll call of aviation luminaries, myself not included, was invited to weigh in.

The Enola Gay, bound for Hiroshima, that’s a heavy one. And from my fellow blogger Christine Negroni: “In 1914, Abram Pheil became the very first passenger on the very first passenger flight, a 23-minute trip from St. Petersburg, Florida to Tampa. Like the 12-second flight of the Wright Brothers eleven years earlier, his brief time in the air has had an enormous impact on the world.”

It’s hard to argue with her. But some of the other entries, I don’t know. D.B. Cooper, come on. Lindbergh’s solo crossing? Nah. Of course, there’s no right or wrong answer. The idea of lists like these is to draw from different perspectives.

Had I been asked, my entry for history’s most significant flight would be Pan Am’s inaugural of the Boeing 747 in 1970.

Pan Am’s Clipper Victor kicked things off between New York and London on January 21st, about six months after the success of Apollo 11. Why this flight? Well, if we broaden this conversation to planes generally, rather than specific flights, we have to rank the Boeing 747 as the most influential aircraft of all time. The industry’s first-ever widebody, it ushered in the concept of affordable long-haul flying, changing global travel as we knew it — and know it still — perhaps more than any other invention.

Plus, it was a gorgeous design. In a production run lasting more than fifty years, Boeing would sell more than a thousand of them.

(Ironically the Victor was the very same 747 destroyed at Tenerife in 1977, in history’s worst aviation disaster. Remarkably, this single aircraft was involved in two of the most historic flights of all time, one celebratory and the other catastrophic.)

Runner up, for influence if not aesthetics, would be the Douglas DC-3.

Rolled out in 1935, the DC-3 wasn’t really the first of anything, but it perfected the evolution of the all-metal passenger transport to become the first truly profitable and mass-produced airliner. So many thousands of DC-3s were built, in civilian and military versions, both in the U.S. and under license abroad, that nobody knows for sure the actual count.

As late as the 1960s more than a thousand DC-3s were still in airline service. Today every passenger plane, from a ten-seater to the 787, bears a debt to this antique piston twin.

Much the same way, Boeing’s four-engined 707 revolutionized air travel forever.

The 707 was third in jetliner chronology — the star-crossed de Havilland Comet and the Soviet Union’s Tu-104 copycat came before it — but it was faster, with greater range and more seats, taking the Comet’s ill fortune and turning it into gold, safely crossing oceans and continents at twice the speed of mainstay propliners.

When, in 1958, Pan Am launched the 707 between New York and Paris (just like Lindbergh), the jet age truly was born. A year later American Airlines inaugurated transcon 707 nonstops between New York and Los Angeles. The poet Carl Sandburg was aboard.

Yes, well, sorry to some of you who’d lobby for something flashier. The Concorde, I know, makes a prettier icon than the 707 or a DC-3. But while sexy and famous, it proved little beyond the non-viability of the SST concept. Perhaps when hydrogen replaces kerosene this category will be reborn.

Photo Credits:

Lufthansa 747 by the author.
Pan Am 747 courtesy of Pan Am Historical Foundation.
DC-3 courtesy of Unsplash.
707 by Boeing, public domain.
707 thumbnail from the author’s postcard collection.

When Culture and Air Travel Intersect

Crossovers. That’s my name for those moments when history, culture, art or politics intersect unexpectedly with commercial aviation. They underscore the many ways, not always recognized, that air travel touches our lives.

This will be an ongoing series. I’ll add to it as opportunities come up.

— NEW: AEROPOLITICS

This one speaks for itself. A 767 of El Al, the Israeli carrier, buddy-buddy with an Iran Air 747 at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. I took this photo a decade ago, but the theme couldn’t be more timely.

Was this by accident, do you think, or were the authorities at BKK pushing for a sort of tarmac detente?

It’s hard to imagine, but in the days before the revolution in Iran, El Al flew scheduled service between Tel Aviv and Tehran. Iran Air had routes from New York to Tehran via London and Paris. Somewhere in a box is a picture of an Iran Air 747 that I took at Kennedy Airport in 1979, using an old Kodak Instamatic, from the rooftop parking lot of terminal 3.

Photo by the author

— HISTORY IN BLUE

This mural is in Portugal, near the city of Aveiro. Put up in the 1960s, during the glory days of Pan Am, it remains mostly intact. What makes it special is that it’s constructed using azulejos — the traditional, blue and white glazed tiles seen all over Portugal.

A similar Pan Am billboard can be found on a hillside above the Portuguese town of Leiria. Whether they’re actual azulejos or just painted to look that way I’m not sure. Either way it’s impressive, and Pan Am’s signature colors lend themselves nicely to the azulejo style. To think that so much effort and style was once put into an airline advertisement.

If you’re ever in Lisbon, be sure to visit the Museu Nacional do Azulejo, also known by its boring English name, the Tile Museum. It’s one of the city’s lesser known attractions, but home to one of the world’s largest ceramics collections, full of beautiful murals and mosaics.

Photo by Rui Vaz, courtesy of the Pan Am Historical Foundation.

— TAIL TALE

If you’ve followed the MH370 saga, you’ve no doubt grown familiar with the Malaysia Airlines logo. It’s seen all the time in news posts and articles. What you might assume is a meaningless abstract branding tool is in fact a cultural emblem: the logo uses the shape of an indigenous Malaysian kite known as the wau bulan, or moon kite.

True story: In 1993 I was in the city of Kota Bahru, a conservative Islamic town in northern Malaysia close to the Thai border, when we saw a group of little kids flying wau kites. At the time I didn’t realize where the airline’s logo had come from, but I recognized the pattern immediately. It was one of those crossover moments we aerophiles really savor.

Malaysia Airlines was formed in the early 1970s after its predecessor, Malaysia-Singapore Airlines (MSA), split to become Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines. Both carriers are renowned for their service, and cabin crews of both airlines wear the iconic, floral-pattern Sarong Kabaya batik — an adaptation of the traditional Malay kebaya blouse.

March 4, 2024

HERE’S THE perfect segue from last week’s post. If you missed it, we were talking about the hype and hyperbole that seem to follow every minor incident these days, a phenomenon that I blame, in part, on the dearth of legitimately serious accidents. It often feels as if flying is getting more dangerous, when statistically we’re safer than ever.

To wit, according to the annual report just released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) 2023 goes down as one of the safest years in commercial aviation history. Not a single fatal accident was recorded involving a commercial jet. Not one.

Combining jet and turboprop operations, IATA says there were 37 million commercial flights last year. Among those, the only deadly crash was that of an ATR turboprop in Nepal last January. If I’m counting right, this puts last year as the second-safest on record, bested only by 2017.

This is nothing if not astonishing. And to glean a sense of how astonishing, you need to flip through the history books. You need to look at the accident archives of the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s and 1990s, when multiple disasters were the norm, year after year after year.

For example, in 1985, twenty-seven major accidents killed almost 2,500 people. That included the JAL crash outside Tokyo with 520 fatalities; the Arrow Air disaster in Newfoundland that killed 240 American servicemen, and the Air-India bombing over the North Atlantic with 329 dead.

In 1974 there were ten disasters, including the Turkish Airlines catastrophe outside Paris that killed 346 people. Among the other nine were two Pan Am 707s, two TWA jets (one of which was bombed), and an Eastern DC-9. That’s five U.S. legacy crashes in the same year. Eastern and TWA had crashes within three days of each other.

And so on. Those were particularly bad years, but you get the picture.

I’ve mentioned all of this before. Apologies to those who are sick of me talking about it. But it always bears repeating, because so few people really understand how safe flying has become.

How we got here is also something I’ve discussed in the past. It’s been a combination of things: better technologies, better training, and, believe it or not, better regulation and oversight. For more, see the links below.

And yes, luck has played a role as well. We closed out 2023 with a near-perfect record, but not without a few close calls. Which is what makes posts like this so frustrating. Because sooner or later our luck will run out; there will be another major crash, right here on U.S. soil. As good as we are, we’ll never be perfect. And when it happens, nobody is going to care how long it’s been since the last one. History won’t matter, perspective won’t matter, stats won’t matter. The result will be hysteria and a media firestorm like no other.

It’s precisely because of how rare crashes have become that we’re guaranteed to overreact to the next one. Which is both fair and unfair, I suppose.

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Upper photo by Pedro Pinheiro
Center photo by Michael Saporito
Lower photo by the author

December 4, 2021

IT WAS thirty years ago, on December 4th, 1991, that Pan American World Airways ceased operations.

This is possibly, maybe, the most significant (and unfortunate) anniversary in airline history, marking the death of history’s most significant airline.

Pan Am’s firsts, bests, longests, mosts, and whatever other superlatives you might come up with, are untouched, and untouchable. Its achievements include conquest of the Pacific Ocean and launch of both the 707 and 747, the two most influential jetliners of all time. Founded and led by a visionary entrepreneur from New Jersey named Juan Trippe, the airline’s network would reach into every nook and corner of the planet, its blue globe logo among the world’s most widely recognized trademarks. It was the only airline to have its own Manhattan skyscraper — the Walter Gropius-designed Pan Am Building, soaring over Grand Central Terminal.

The carrier’s slow and ignominious decline, punctuated by the sales of its most valuable assets and — for a final coffin nail, the Lockerbie bombing — is a tale of hubris, poor management, the volatility of a deregulated airline industry, and plain old bad luck. Most agree that the final chapter began around the time of the disastrous merger with National Airlines in 1980. Six years later Pan Am would sell its Tokyo-Narita hub and Asian routes to United. Four years after that, its transatlantic network was handed over to Delta. The airline’s winnowed remains stumbled on for another year or so. It was just a shell of itself in the end, with dismal service and shabby old planes.

“Now the world is every man’s oyster,” Juan Trippe once said.

December 4th, 1991, was a Wednesday. I was laying over that night in a Sheraton in Burlington, Vermont. I almost never watch television in hotel rooms, but this time, for some reason, I had the news on. Suddenly the story broke. I remember some of the footage: panicky-looking employees rushing around a ticket counter, that sort of thing.

Pan Am’s final flight was a Boeing 727 from Barbados to Miami. Which was fitting, I guess. South Florida is where it all began, 64 years earlier, on a route from Key West to Havana.

For pilots, a job with Pan Am was once the most prestigious and glamorous job in aviation. By the end, though, they weren’t paying very much. I never had the chance to apply. On the day the carrier fell, I was a young Beech-99 captain still cutting his teeth. Working for a major carrier wouldn’t be a realistic option for several more years.

I was, however, lucky enough to have flown Pan Am a handful of times, including trips from Frankfurt to JFK on a 747, and from JFK to Rio de Janeiro on an L-1011. I also was a semi-regular customer on the Pan Am Shuttle between Boston and New York in the months before the shut-down. And, one of my most cherished memories is the day I spent plane-spotting on the roof of the Pan Am “Worldport” (later known as boring old Terminal 3) at Kennedy, as a seventh-grader in 1979.

Further reading…

There have been plenty — some would say too many — hardbound homages to the legacy of Pan Am. Most of these are pretty awful (crudely written flight attendant memoirs and such), but two are outstanding:

The first is Barnaby Conrad’s elegantly documented and superbly illustrated chronicle, Pan Am: An Aviation Legend. Not to detract from Conrad’s prose, but the photos and artwork are what make this volume special. The double-page spread of the flight attendants in the doorway of the “Clipper Freedom” is my favorite, along with the shot of the Beatles at Idlewild, coming down the stairs of the 707. This a fantastic book not merely for airline enthusiasts, but for any student of the history of 20th-century America.

The second is Matthias C. Hühne’s Pan Am: History, Design & Identity. So much of airline history has been told graphically — in the liveries, travel posters, promotional brochures and advertising copy of the world’s great airlines. It’s amazing, the level of attention and resources airlines once devoted to the finer points of their branding, and how spectacular so much of it was. This is particularly true with Pan Am.

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