Today's Honorary Subscriber: Show Biography

Juan Trippe (1899 - 1981)

Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American commercial aviation pioneer Juan Terry Trippe (1899-1981), who was one of the founders and first president of the company that became Pan American World Airways.

After serving as a Navy pilot in World War I, Trippe established an "air taxi" service in 1922 with several surplus government aircraft. Three years later he and two former Yale classmates and another friend formed Colonial Air Transport, which began the first airmail contract route between New York City and Boston. In 1927 he arranged a merger between Colonial Air and two other small airlines, forming Pan American Airways, with himself as president. That year Pan American inaugurated the first international air service, flying between Havana, Cuba, and Key West, Fla. Other firsts followed as Trippe shrewdly parlayed his contacts in government both in the United States and abroad into valuable airmail contracts, extending his company's routes to Europe, Africa, South America, and the Orient. Pan American became the largest air-transport company in the world and, for many years, flew more route miles than any other airline. Under Trippe's strong direction Pan American became the first company to order commercial jets (1955) and one of the first to buy the wide-bodied Boeing 747 jet (1966) for long-distance travel. After World War 2 he championed low-cost air fares and introduced the two-tiered passenger class system. By the time Trippe retired as president and executive director of the company in 1968, however, Pan American had lost its preeminence in the industry owing to increased competition from other U.S. airlines.

Trippe was the son of a New York banker and broker of English descent, but he was named for Juanita Terry, the wife of a great-uncle. The idea for setting up an American trans-oceanic airline company was the brain child of fighter ace, race car driver, and entrepreneur Eddie Rickenbacker and General Hap Arnold, father of the army air corps and later the U.S. Air Force. They saw that the important trans-oceanic air routes were all covered by French, German, and Italian airlines, with no U.S. carriers. But it was Juan Tripp who, as Pan Am's president, provided the visionary leadership and determination that turned Pan Am into the global leader in scheduled trans-oceanic flight. Trippe's first important step was to commission the building of the plane that would come to be called the "China Clipper," With this twin-engine passenger seaplane as part of its commercial fleet, Pan Am was able to set up routes to the orient, the Caribbean and South America, all destinations where airports were few, but rivers and other waterways were plentiful to accommodate Pan Am's seaplanes. The clipper had a range of 3,600 miles with a cruise speed of 150 mph, and reduced travel time to the Orient from over two weeks to five days. The U.S. subsidized these flights with airmail.

In 1942 the China Clipper was drafted into the Navy. It's now on permanent display at the Smithsonian's Air and Space in Washington, DC. In 1936 Hollywood starred Pat O'Brien and Humphrey Bogart in the movie "China Clipper", a fictionalized account of the start of trans-pacific flight.