"Safety and Service"

LXXXV

A sign in Key West marks the spot where Clipper General Machado lifted off for Cuba. Pan Am's first ship, she began an intermittent tradition of naming ships for dignitaries --- foreign and domestic

Anthony Fokker was piloting when Juan Trippe flew down to Cuba to visit President Machado. On the way down, Juan had naturally climbed into the co-pilot’s seat and shared the controls with Tony Fokker. On the way home, he sat in the passenger section studying paperwork and scribbling notes. He let Fokker do all the flying. At some point during that first brief stay in Cuba Juan Trippe had changed irrevocably. He’d gone from airline pilot to airline executive. Juan would sit in the cockpit with his hands on the yokes again, many times, but from that moment on, only for his own enjoyment. He’d finally realized that it was true what his family had been saying: We aren’t captains, we hire them.

"Safety and Service": This early 1928 brochure introduced people to Pan Am. A flight to Havana was $50.00 and a passenger could carry 30 pounds of luggage

Possibly Juan had a copy of Hugo Eckener’s DELAG “flight bible” in his library. In any case, he set out to create something similar for Pan American Airways. 

First things first: 

 

The Pan American pilots' uniform bespoke of Juan Trippe's brief days as a Naval Aviator

Uniforms.            All Pan Am flight crews were to wear a distinctive and consistent uniform. Juan felt it lent gravitas to the experience of flying. In an era of leather helmets and goggles, oil-stained pilot overalls and dashing silk scarves, he wanted his men to stand out as an organized professional unit. At first, the uniform he designed was deplorably pedestrian --- khakis and a white shirt with bow tie --- but after seeing the garb on a crewman, he completely changed the look. Pilots henceforth were to dress with military precision. Juan decided to go back to his abbreviated days as a Naval Air Cadet, and copied the Navy’s dress uniform, right down to the cuff rings on the jacket. 

Sometime in the middle of the Twentieth Centurys, the uniformed flight crew of a Pan Am flight boards their ship with military precision

Deportment.       Juan Trippe didn’t care if his men smoked and swore and chased skirt like sailors on shore leave. In fact, he hoped they did. On their own time. On his time, he expected sobriety and seriousness, courtesy and gentlemanly behavior toward everyone around. No raised voices. No dramatics. He invented a rule that the crew was to conduct its preflight checks (something else he invented or at least standardized on his planes) before the passengers boarded. The crew was then to clear out, reboarding only after the passengers were seated, in slow march time. He wanted his passengers to see the crew as an organized professional unit. 

A 1950s Stratocruiser: A Pan American Captain checks on his passengers. The uniform design recalled the nautical roots of Juan Trippe's dream child

Skill.           Juan expected a pilot to be able to do every job on the plane. Navigator. Radioman. Flight Engineer. Even Mechanic. Later on, would-be pilots even had to do a little Stewarding. And he created a rule that a man couldn’t become a full-fledged Pan American pilot unless he’d mastered every job on board his plane. Juan foresaw a time when his planes would be flying to remote corners of the earth with few or no ground facilities and if something needed to be done to get the plane in the air, then, by God, the captain of the ship better know how to do it. 

A Pan Am ad designed by Juan Trippe  himself captures his vision for the airline perfectly. "Flying Clippers" unlike airships, "flew," they didn't "sail."

Flying ability.       Safety was the official watchword, followed a close second by Service. Juan wanted and needed the best pilots, but he wanted airline pilots, not barnstormers. The pilots were to try to make the passengers’ ride as smooth as possible. That meant avoiding bumpy air (which made people nervous especially in smaller planes) and avoiding maneuvers like dives and steep turns and sharp climbs. Stunting, of any sort, was forbidden. Juan Trippe was under no illusions. He knew that flying through the air like Icarus could get you killed, and he wrote, “Speak not of safety but of dependability.”

The names of Pan Am's ships always appeared on their fuselages. This Yankee Clipper is only a mock-up, located at the Flying Boat Museum in Foynes, Ireland. Foynes, on the west Irish coast, was the major destination point for Clippers on the transatlantic route. Not a single one of the old Clippers survives

The aircraft themselves.        Pan American’s flying machines were not to be referred to as agglomerations of call numbers. As a matter of fact, they weren’t planes at all. They were to be given individual names, like seagoing vessels, and Juan proudly gave them the name Clippers, fulfilling a youthful fantasy of his. Pan American would be known as “The System of the Flying Clippers.”

The Clipper General Machado, Pan American's first passenger clipper. A Fokker F.VII Trimotor, she flew from Key West to Havana on October 28, 1927 with eight passengers and mail, where the delighted Cuban Presidente cracked a bottle of champagne against the bows. The ship had a short career. In 1928, pilots flew without navigational equipment. Clipper General Machado became lost in bad weather and was forced to make a water landing in rough seas. She sank. One passenger drowned. After the accident, Pan Am spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars in researching and developing radio direction finder (RDF) technologies  

Much of this, Juan knew, could only be instituted over time, but there had to be a beginning. When he arrived back in Key West and he’d had a chance to inspect the new Fokker Trimotors (which finally, wonderfully arrived), he waited until the first one had reached Havana before christening it, after his new friend, Clipper General Machado.