Passenger Poaching

CLXVIII

Hawaii Clipper at Pearl Harbor

The China Clipper (and its sisters) was, for all its fame, not the ultimate transpacific aircraft. Advertised to carry forty-one passengers, the M-130 rarely carried more than 36 passengers and 6-9 crew. And it couldn’t carry more than eighteen passengers on the 2,400 mile leg between San Francisco and Honolulu. 

S.S. Lurline, 1933

On that first leg, the ship was usually fitted out with Pullman berths (unlike today, no one expected passengers to sit in upright seats for the entirety of the eighteen-hour flight). With the berths set up, the passenger load was reduced to twelve, or one third of the actual total the plane could otherwise carry.

A Matson Lines ad of the era

In order to carry a full passenger load beyond Honolulu, Pan American was forced to enter into a cooperative agreement with Matson Shipping Lines. Under the agreement, the famed Lurline and her three sisters were designated to carry the 24 additional Clipper passengers between California and Hawaii.  

Life aboard the Lurline; the Second Class Dining Saloon

Who flew and who sailed was supposedly a “first come, first served” issue, but in reality was determined by weight (each passenger was allowed 55 pounds of luggage and was individually weighed before they boarded). Overweight passengers, or passengers whose combined weight exceeded the allowable limits for the plane on that leg (which varied somewhat according to the total payload) were driven to the Matson dock --- unless they were VIPs. Pan American had no problem loading the plane with high-profile celebrities and letting the Philippine Regional Manager of Endicott-Johnson Shoes take a slow boat ride to Diamond Head. 

Clipper ships to the Orient, 1850s

Juan Trippe hated the idea of using Matson Lines as his adjunct carrier, but he had no real options. He did not want, for example, another Pan-American-Grace (Panagra) arrangement in the Pacific. Although Panagra was a remarkably effective and efficient air carrier in practice, the 50-50 split in the Boardroom meant that a tremendous amount of corporate energy was always expended trying to make the airline work as each side maneuvered for advantage. It was an exhausting and dysfunctional business model.

Cover art of a Matson Lines dinner menu: Hawaii becomes a U.S. Territory

Instead of a “Panatson,” Trippe simply contracted with Matson to carry passengers as part of their Pan Am ticket price. It was hardly a happy arrangement. Prior to the introduction of the M-130s, Pan American had acted to block Matson from establishing its own transpacific air service, and so the two corporations were not friendly toward one another. Although the agreement specified that neither carrier could poach passengers from the other, Matson had Pan Am’s people as a captive audience for several days at a time. Though the shipping line never openly attacked Pan Am, there was plenty of shipboard gossip among the passengers that the Clippers were noisy, cramped, undependable and less luxurious than the slower, statelier liners. Where it came from nobody seemed to know. Counterbalancing this was the romanticism of the Clippers and their relative speed. How many passengers jumped ship to Matson is difficult to say (relatively few on the outbound turn, since nearly everyone wanted to say they’d flown on the China Clippers) but the return flights showed a decrease in bookings.

The double-decked Boeing 314 Clipper succeeded the M-130 in 1939 and raised the standard of transoceanic air travel

Thus, it wasn’t long before Juan Trippe began casting about for a new, improved, longer-range, larger, and even more luxurious Clipper. His “Millionaire’s Flight” on the Hindenburg in 1936 did not interest him at all in airships (as Dr. Hugo Eckener had hoped) but the twin-deck spacious and glamorously-appointed zeppelin inspired Juan Trippe to create a Clipper of similar dimensions.*  

Boeing 314 over San Francisco

*See LIV: “Dr. Eckener’s Lament”