Come Fly with Me (The Story of Pan Am)
Quote from JW411:
They seemed to have cornered the market in old boilers who had perfected the art of doing the absolute minimum possible to look after passengers.
Love it! And, in the Eighties, some of the most senior of them were to be found gracing the hotel swimming pool at Roberts Field, Monrovia: taking a flying break from running their businesses in the US. Their JFK/DKR/ROB rotation, slipping at ROB, was a very "senior" trip. Rumour had it that, on the way home, they were not to be seen from top of climb ex-Dakar.
Back in the mid-Seventies, as a B707-320 copilot, I had a close shave one night with a PanAm B747 which was operating that service. We were from Gatwick or Lisbon en-route to Recife or Rio, tracking south-westwards over the Atlantic off the West African coast, working Dakar on HF and transmitting blind position reports on 126.9 MHz (as one did/does). We were passing roughly 150nm abeam Dakar at FL350 when I eye-balled the anti-collision lights of an aircraft at a similar cruise level in our 10 o'clock, quickly moving left to right. It was evidently on a north-westerly track. About 25 seconds after it passed in front of us, there was an appalling crash from our front galley as we hit its wake. It was all over in a split second, of course. We called on 126.9 but there was no response. Dakar admitted there was a PanAm 747 DKR/JFK. I often wondered what would have happened, SAR-wise, if we had collided in cloud.
Quote from skytrain10:
As for the Comet, I guess we should be grateful it got a mention. Sadly its early problems played in to the hands of Boeing (and Douglas) who produced true transatlantic capable aircraft that DH could simply not compete with.
That's generally fair, but in this context just a touch unkind. When the Comet finally re-entered service with BOAC as the Comet 4 in 1958, it not only beat PanAm's B707 as the first jet to operate schedules across the North Atlantic by a few weeks, but was capable of reliably operating non-stop in both directions. I was still in short trousers at the time, but didn't PanAm normally have to lob into Shannon on the westbound service?
They seemed to have cornered the market in old boilers who had perfected the art of doing the absolute minimum possible to look after passengers.
Love it! And, in the Eighties, some of the most senior of them were to be found gracing the hotel swimming pool at Roberts Field, Monrovia: taking a flying break from running their businesses in the US. Their JFK/DKR/ROB rotation, slipping at ROB, was a very "senior" trip. Rumour had it that, on the way home, they were not to be seen from top of climb ex-Dakar.
Back in the mid-Seventies, as a B707-320 copilot, I had a close shave one night with a PanAm B747 which was operating that service. We were from Gatwick or Lisbon en-route to Recife or Rio, tracking south-westwards over the Atlantic off the West African coast, working Dakar on HF and transmitting blind position reports on 126.9 MHz (as one did/does). We were passing roughly 150nm abeam Dakar at FL350 when I eye-balled the anti-collision lights of an aircraft at a similar cruise level in our 10 o'clock, quickly moving left to right. It was evidently on a north-westerly track. About 25 seconds after it passed in front of us, there was an appalling crash from our front galley as we hit its wake. It was all over in a split second, of course. We called on 126.9 but there was no response. Dakar admitted there was a PanAm 747 DKR/JFK. I often wondered what would have happened, SAR-wise, if we had collided in cloud.
Quote from skytrain10:
As for the Comet, I guess we should be grateful it got a mention. Sadly its early problems played in to the hands of Boeing (and Douglas) who produced true transatlantic capable aircraft that DH could simply not compete with.
That's generally fair, but in this context just a touch unkind. When the Comet finally re-entered service with BOAC as the Comet 4 in 1958, it not only beat PanAm's B707 as the first jet to operate schedules across the North Atlantic by a few weeks, but was capable of reliably operating non-stop in both directions. I was still in short trousers at the time, but didn't PanAm normally have to lob into Shannon on the westbound service?
Quote from A30yoyo:
I think both types had to use Gander depending on winds...the first 6 Pan Am 707s were -100 domestic models...
Yes, and presumably the payload. I guess Gander would have made much more sense westbound than Shannon, particularly if they were trying to keep their options open. (Are you psychic? As I write, your above reply seems to be time-stamped before my question.)
I think both types had to use Gander depending on winds...the first 6 Pan Am 707s were -100 domestic models...
Yes, and presumably the payload. I guess Gander would have made much more sense westbound than Shannon, particularly if they were trying to keep their options open. (Are you psychic? As I write, your above reply seems to be time-stamped before my question.)
I think both types had to use Gander depending on winds...the first 6 Pan Am 707s were -100 domestic models...
Yes, and presumably the payload. I guess Gander would have made much more sense westbound than Shannon, particularly if they were trying to keep their options open.
Yes, and presumably the payload. I guess Gander would have made much more sense westbound than Shannon, particularly if they were trying to keep their options open.
The first 707s, the -120 model, were really only suitable for US coast-to-coast routes rather than Transatlantic. Note that the first such Pan Am jet route was to Paris, not London, which is of course 150 nm further Great Circle. The first proper Pan Am intercontinental 707 was not delivered until a year later, and they came on stream in the Autumn of 1959, when the shorter range models cascaded down to Pan Am’s Caribbean routes.
