How Pan American built the world's first global airline from a Coconut Grove waterfront
Juan Trippe was 27, a Yale graduate from a New York banking family, when he won the U.S. Post Office's Foreign Air Mail Contract Route #1 in 1927. The contract: deliver mail from Key West to Havana before October 19, 1927, or forfeit the bond. Trippe didn't yet have an airplane he could fly. Days before deadline, he chartered a Fairchild FC-2 floatplane from a Dominican carrier and flew the first Pan American Airways flight on October 19. Pan Am's own Fokker F.VII flew the first scheduled service nine days later. Within two years Pan Am had moved its main base to Miami and was building flying boats to reach Latin America. By the late 1930s the Dinner Key seaplane base in Coconut Grove was the world's largest international airline terminal. Sikorsky S-42 Clippers flew Miami to Buenos Aires; Martin M-130 China Clippers reached Manila across the Pacific (1935); Boeing 314 Clippers — the largest commercial aircraft of their era — opened transatlantic service to Lisbon (1939). During WWII, Pan Am secretly contracted with the U.S. military to build a chain of African airfields and fly B-24 Liberators across the South Atlantic ferry route — the airline ran a private war effort the public didn't know about until afterward. Pan Am was the launch customer for the Boeing 707 (1958) and the Boeing 747 (1970). It collapsed on December 4, 1991, brought down by deregulation and the Lockerbie bombing. The Dinner Key terminal building still stands as Miami City Hall — walk inside to see the Pan Am route map carved on the original globe in the lobby.