PAN AM - 1932

APRIL

By Eric Hobson

"It Just Got Cheaper"

Photo compilation clockwise: Fokker and Air Express Trucks in Cuba, PAHF/Grant Mason Collection.  Film frame from “Linking the Americas”, PAHF Collection.Mail Delivery at Miami via S-38 Flying Duck, Florida Memory.

Pan American Airways’ April 1, 1932, announcement of a system-wide air-freight rate-reduction was not an April Fool's Day joke (although its competitors in the emerging air-freight business probably wished it were). Per pound charges dropped by a system-wide average of 30% and up to nearly 40% on some routes. (See chart above for a selected sample of charge changes).

 Observation 

 Air freight destined for Colombia and Jamaica passed through Cuba on the Miami-Havana-Kingston-Barranquilla route but did so less expensively.

The air freight rate cuts reflected classic economies of scale: as PAA added more aircraft, as larger aircraft came online, and, as more routes were created with more flights on all routes, payload space per mile grew throughout the system. And each mile flown at/near to capacity (passenger, airmail, and freight) translated into maximum profits. PAA was working to discover the pricing “sweet spot” that would entice more customers to try this new shipping option.

Source:
“Pan American Air Ways” Vol. 3. No.2, p. 5.

"Come in Barranquilla, Miami Speaking"

Map and Photos: PAHF Collection

PAA’s communications system was key to interruption-free operations across two-continents which was essential to generating revenue above operational costs. And on April 1, 1932, two new communications centers in Miami, Florida and Barranquilla, Colombia, came on-line to help to achieve that performance goal.

PAA’s Miami base opened a new communications operations center at Pan American Field, (West 36th Street Airport, now Miami International). A new building on the airport’s northeast corner contained four transmitters and emergency back-up generator. Although utilitarian, this structure was eye-catching, sitting inside a square formed by four seventy-foot steel masts. PAA’s original passenger terminal had been repurposed and communications personnel staffed receiving stations and a powerful Direction Finder (DF).

PAA’s Barranquilla base situated along the Rio Magdalena, received identical upgrades and added additional radio guidance service across the western Caribbean. “Pan American Air Ways” (Vol. 3, No. 2, p.18) reported that the Barranquilla “D.F. will operate in conjunction with the unit at Kingston which has served us so well during the past year.”

"The Important Work of Maintenance and Airmail"

Photo compilation: Images from PAHF Collection and an arly PAA Route Map by REG Davies.

High-profile routes and new equipment overshadowed growth in essential back-office services occurring in 1932 at the Pan American Airways Dinner Key complex in Miami.

Admittedly, newspaper reporters, photographers, and news reel crews saw airline acquisitions and ground-breaking aircraft such as the Sikorsky S-40 as sexier than the rolling gas tank that C.M. Green (Maintenance Department) developed to speed up fueling aircraft, and for which he won a five-dollar prize. Still, every puzzle piece is important.

The same attention imbalance held for the 900 square foot “exchange post office” that opened inside the Pan American International Airport’s new hanger. The facility operated 365 days a year using state-of-the-art postal technology to process 100% of North and South American airmail passing through Miami. And it even provided standard counter services found in regular post offices.

Locating a post office at Dinner Key allowed all airmail to be sorted on-site rather than trucked to Miami’s downtown post office for processing and then trucked back to waiting aircraft. This air-mail innovation sped mail processing and contributed to air mail shifting from an “emergency” to a “normal” means of communication. Additionally, the Dinner Key facility predicted the now-ubiquitous presence of on-site Postal Service processing at major metropolitan airports. 

"New Stationery = More Airmail Customers"

Photomontage: PAHF Collection & PAHF/Mark Tyx Collection

In the early 1930s, Pan Am was still largely dependent on US Post Office payments for international airmail contracts. Things had been improving financially, but income growth required more letter writers to accept airmail as a regular option.

So in Spring 1932 PAA’s Mail Traffic Division launched a system-wide campaign to equate airmail with regular written correspondence. The hook: “Pan American Airways Bond,” special light weight writing paper and matching envelopes. As much as six sheets in a small envelope would weigh less than the one-half ounce limit provided for with an airmail stamp.

PAA’s Mail Traffic Division’s emotional pitch was straightforward:

“This service should give [airmail users] opportunity of writing lengthy letters without worrying about exceeding the weight limit.”

Order blanks for the new PAA watermarked stationery with matching envelopes bearing “Pan American Airways System” along with the winged-globe logo and distinctive blue and red stripes were sent out with samples. Soon the orders came flooding back. Before long Pan Am’s airmail stationery became the new standard for international airmail correspondence, which in turn boosted PAA’s foreign airmail carriage and payments from the US Post Office. In the process, PAA made money too.

 “For the Books!”

PAHF Photo compilation:

Commodore over Guanabara Bay, state of Rio de Janeiro / Pan American Airways S-40 Poster / Boarding a Sikorsky S-40 / Cover, “Afloat and Aflight in the Caribbean/ Cover, “Flying over South America.

Keeping Pan American Airways in the news, the Public Relations Department (headed by William Van Dusen who came to PAA in 1931 with NYRBA - the New York Rio and Buenos Aires airline acquisition) worked newspapers, magazine, radio, and newsreels with Madison Avenue fervor. The team also pushed PAA in mass-market books, snagging readers who might fly tomorrow or for whom boarding a commercial airliner was only a dream.

PAA first garnered mention in popular book-length travelogues such as Lewis R. Freeman’s “Afloat and Aflight in the Caribbean” (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1932), and Annie S. Peck’s “Flying over South America” (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1932).

Written by writers whose niche was blow-by-blow accounts of travels to exotic destinations, these books offered readers vicarious international travel experiences.*

While he chronicled a circuit of the Caribbean, Lewis Freeman introduced PAA veteran pilots Wallace “Cubby” Culbertson, Edwin “Ed” Musick, Edward “Dutch” Schultz, Elmer Rodenbaugh, R.O.D. Sullivan, John “Jack” Tilton, and Earl White, emphasizing their skill and professionalism. By the end of the decade, Musick, Sullivan, and Tilton, in particular, would become household names as PAA crossed the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Annie S. Peck, reflecting on seven months spent touring South America, wrote about luxury aloft:

“The Clipper Ships contain a ladies’ lounge, smoking-salon, buffet, fitted to prepare meals in the air, with electric range and refrigerator. With real couches and easy chairs, they afford vastly more luxurious comfort than the finest Pullman, room to circulate easily, stewards to wait upon the guests, so to speak, and no tips essential. The tickets include meals, in some places ordered in advance to suit the passenger, and for through passengers include night accommodations ashore.” (“Flying over South America” by Annie S. Peck, p. 250).

*Mentions in books had a unique benefit: PAA’s exposure increased whenever readers reread a book and shared it with family and friends.