Come Fly With Me: The Story of Pan Am (2011, BBC Documentary)
The idea of having dinner in one place and breakfast in another time zone fascinated many a young aspirant that the fast, furious and restless applied for jobs to serve their clientele. In the service business, aesthetics and physical attributes were essential in selecting stewards and stewardesses. This, of course, was before the time body-shaming and diversity was even a term. Even though ferrying rich guys from points A to B is basically what a paid chauffeur would do, being a pilot brought so much dignity. Parents soon accepted it as an addition to the top four professional courses, i.e., medicine, law, architecture and accountancy, they wanted their kids to do. Of course, much science is involved in bringing a heap of metal across continents. Furthermore, an undesirable outcome for affluent customers may have disastrous consequences for the world economy or progress.
That was when stewardesses had all the time to chat with passengers to help them when needed. Of course, there was a natural selection of travellers. Remember, not everyone could fly then.
Talking about 'everyone can fly', the famous tagline of Asia's biggest budget airlines, the democratisation of the air space also opened up the job of flight stewards (later rehashed a lesser important sounding flight attendant) to less stringent criteria. Anyone could fly as a crew.
Pan Am ruled the airspace at a time when planes were small and propeller-driven. Even when jet engines made flying easier as bigger planes could be built, less fuel was consumed, and with fewer stops, Pan Am was the unofficial carrier of the USA. Its staff were the benchmark of how training should be done. Their ticketing model and computation were followed the world over. The persona of a flight pilot, steward and stewardess became a yardstick for other airlines to emulate.
.jpeg)
That was when stewardesses had all the time to chat with passengers to help them when needed. Of course, there was a natural selection of travellers. Remember, not everyone could fly then.
Talking about 'everyone can fly', the famous tagline of Asia's biggest budget airlines, the democratisation of the air space also opened up the job of flight stewards (later rehashed a lesser important sounding flight attendant) to less stringent criteria. Anyone could fly as a crew.
Pan Am ruled the airspace at a time when planes were small and propeller-driven. Even when jet engines made flying easier as bigger planes could be built, less fuel was consumed, and with fewer stops, Pan Am was the unofficial carrier of the USA. Its staff were the benchmark of how training should be done. Their ticketing model and computation were followed the world over. The persona of a flight pilot, steward and stewardess became a yardstick for other airlines to emulate.
.jpeg)
Starting as a getaway route to escape the effects of Prohibition in the 1930s, Pan Am prospered by using boat planes from Florida to Cuba. Wealthy people could fly to Cuba over the weekend for their alcohol fix. Slowly, aeronautical technology improved by leaps and bounds during the World Wars. After WW2, jet engines became the preferred method of flying.
Pan Am ruled the skies, and its icon logo spoke volumes of its branding. Everyone found pride in carrying the marine blue Pan Am bag. Many knock-offs sprang up in third-world countries like Malaysia, and many of my friends in school used them as school bags.
Behind the squeaky clean image of the airline, there is a darker side. The Americans had used its vessels to clandestinely spy on other nations. In 1962, just before the Bay of Pig invasion, its plane rescued many American spies from Cuba. Back then, the picture of a line of air stewardesses walking poise past the sea of travellers in the airport, leaving a trail of a whiff of perfume, was deemed empowering. It was customary to impose stringent weight quotas and restrictions upon marriage and child-bearing to continue working.
Pan Am's golden age ended with the easing of flight regulations. The 1970s energy crisis contributed to it. Restricting operations after the reign of Juan Trippe, where they concentrated on US domestic flights, proved disastrous. The last biggest news that came before their bust was the fatal bombing of the vessel in Lockerbie by Libyan terrorists in 1988. By 1991, they were bankrupt.
 |
Boeing B-314 The pinnacle of flying boat technology in the 1930s. Pan Am chief Juan Trippe continued using the term 'Clipper' for its airplanes to link his airline with the maritime heritage of the world's great ocean liners. The planes could land and take off at any harbour, no airfield needed. |
 |
| Boeing 314 Dining Room |
The Pan Am TV series was very successful in recreating the innocent age of baby boomers. After putting the evils of the Second World War behind them, the world was single-hearted in taking leaps and bounds in science and technology. The subversive elements of the world had not resorted to hijacking an aeroplane to make a political statement. The cockpit need not be securely bolted from the inside. And taking pictures in the pilot's sea was cool and inspired many wannabe pilots. Now, the crew has to defend themselves for indiscipline. A cockpit is a volatile area and a restricted zone at that. Every entree into the plane, or for that matter, every passenger, is now viewed as a potential suicide bomber. A shoe is not just a shoe but needs to be examined for explosives. It was perfectly normal then to recite a prayer loudly in the cabin if you were anxious about flying. Try reciting anything in Arabic now! You can no longer call your old friend, Jack, 'Hi Jack' without the air marshalls tasering you down.
The hierarchical order in command in full force can be seen here in this era. The Captain takes full charge, and everybody else is beneath him. As time passed, we realised that this same attitude brought down many planes in many instances afterwards. Pilot error was apparent in many crashes to everyone except the airline pilot, but the co-pilot and the rest of the crew were too timid to voice out. Repeated flight crash reports highlighted this fact later.
Unfortunately, the TV series only lasted one season. Business wrangling between studios made making the second season difficult.
I remember my Parasitology professor telling the class that more people die of malaria than from jumbo jets crashing. But obviously, the hype of the news of a jetplane crashing draws such attention that so much money and research is invested in making air travel safe. Unfortunately, malaria, being the curse of the poor, remains unfunded.
During my last travels, after watching Pan Am, the series, my twisted mind went wondering yet again. At one time, it was the crew's duty to guard their passengers at all cost, with idioms like the Captain would go down with the ship and all as Captain Edward Smith did with the Titanic. Now, it is like they herding a herd of cattle, ensuring the pack reaches the marketplace akin to how Uncle Buck and his jolly men would herd their cattle from High Chaparral to Tuscon, Arizona. They want to spare the embarrassment of explaining their whereabouts to Big John Cannon.
No comments:
Post a Comment