40 year anniversary on 22 January 2010
Pan American World Airways is long gone but the 747, into its fifth generation, still strives. Forty years ago on 22 January 1970 it was a Pan Am clipper that introduced this undisputed king of large aircraft to revenue service. N736PA, a 747-100 flew from New York to London and became famous on account of the originally scheduled 747 having had to turn back from the runway due to engine trouble. This rather ominous start of revenue services was quickly forgotten, helped in no small degree by the now legendary reliability of all 747 variants.
The first 747 revenue flight being operated by Pan Am was no accident. Juan Trippe, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Pan Am was behind the idea of a very large aircraft. Bill Allen of Boeing was Trippe’s friend and in 1960 Trippe went to ask him to build a plane much bigger than the 707. The rest is history of course.
N736PA went on to become, on 2 August 1970, the first 747 to be hijacked to Cuba. Mr. Castro inspected the plane in person (who knows, may be he had ordered up the hijacking so that he too could have a look at the Americans’ new toy…) and the 747 was on its way again in less than an hour.
The next time N736PA was in the news was her obituary. It was N736PA that collided with a KLM 747 on 27 March 1977 at Tenerife Airport, Canary Islands, destroying both aircraft.
You can read more details about this historic event in the January 2010 edition (now on sale) of Airways Magazine.