Pan Am at War

The amphibious character of Pan American Airways Corp. was well shown in its annual report last week. As a corporation, Pan Am earned $3,361,252, a new high; reported a net U.S. Government subsidy of $429,000, a new low. But the report also read like a military communique, for Pan Am is an instrument of U.S. policy and a weapon of global war. Though 38 Pan Am men are Jap prisoners, the news was mostly very good.

Pan Am last year hacked out new U.S. airfields in the jungles of three continents. It created a 7,000-mile overseas airline to Africa, and then a 5,000-mile airline to the Middle East, over deserts where camels had to carry the gas. It pushed on to India, met itself coming west in China. It replaced miles of Axis airlines in Latin America, it trained 1,850 navigators at its Miami School for the U.S. Army and the R.A.F.; it ferried bombers and carried I secret military missions.

Pan Am facts and figures of 1941:

> Some 25,000 miles of new military routes were opened, bringing total Pan Am route miles up to 98,582.

> Air mail jumped from 75,000,000 ton-miles in 1940 to 110,000,000; passengers jumped from 285,095 to 375,732.

> China National Aviation Corp., 45% Pan Am-owned, still functions under Pan Am management. Its chief job: keeping Chungking in contact with Calcutta, over the world's toughest flying route.

> Latin American route mileage increased 15%, miles flown 34%. With shipping scarcer, Pan Am's 60 weekly flights south from the U.S. are more & more vital to hemisphere transport.

> Gross operating revenues reached a record $38,957,086. But U.S. revenue from stamp sales (plus Pan Am's return of certain of its collections from foreign governments for mail carried to U.S.) rose so high (to $12,322,000) that the subsidy cost to the U.S. sank to only about 1.1% of Pan Am's total revenue (see chart, p. 73).

In the tropical jungles of both hemispheres where Pan Am is pioneering, one American in three was recently down with malaria at one time. Pan Am had to bring in doctors, build sewers, set up purifiers, etc., in order to fly at all.

After the war, Pan Am will have another kind of battle on its hands. Many of its new routes tangle with British Overseas Airways' jealously guarded Empire routes. Cunard has announced that it may be forced to start air service after the war; so will many another U.S. and foreign company. But pioneering Pan Am is getting a long head start.

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