Pan Am Moves for FAA Certification Over Thirty Years After Shutting Its Doors

More than three decades after it went defunct, Pan American World Airways is attempting a comeback. Aviation merchant bank AVi8 Air Capital, alongside Pan American Global Holdings, has officially kicked off the Part 121 airline certification process to reestablish what was once the picture of aviation luxury on a small fleet of used Airbuses.

Avi8 claims that it has “assembled a world-class team to lead the certification effort and has received strong initial support from aircraft lessors and key vendors.” The company has already hammered out a business plan, marking the first major hurdle in a long regulatory battle of safety reviews, operations manuals, maintenance procedures, and crew training. If all goes well, Pan Am could theoretically be airborne sometime next year.

Earning a Part 121 cert isn’t just paperwork: Pan Am 2.0 will need to recruit pilots, flight attendants, dispatchers, and maintenance staff while setting up entire safety and quality-control systems from scratch, which is not a cheap task. With no revenue, every day of certification burns cash… and the FAA is famously sluggish when it comes to getting this process done.

Even if Pan Am clears these hurdles, survival is another story. The US airline market is unforgiving and heavily dominated by four giants, including Delta, American, United, and Southwest. Though the nostalgia and reputation that come with a revived Pan Am might get a few sentimental bookings, the new airline will need more than a retro logo and a dream to stay aloft.

So far, the company hasn’t revealed what kind of aircraft it will use or what routes it plans to fly. Given startup realities, used A320s or A330s seem most likely: affordable, practical, and a long way from the Boeing 747s that once carried Pan Am’s blue globe across the Atlantic.

Pan Am first opened its books in 1927 and made history under founder Juan Trippe and advisor Charles Lindbergh. It became the first US airline to operate an international route that same year and quickly became the go-to for overseas travel, offering gourmet meals and expensive wines along the way. However, things began to go downhill in the 1970s as fuel prices, falling demand, and its acquisition of National Airlines stacked financial pressures. The final straw was the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, ultimately dragging Pan Am into bankruptcy in 1991.

FMI: www.panam.org