I’m old enough to remember Pan American World Airways, which throughout my early years was America’s foremost airline. I flew Pan Am on many occasions (including, once, all the way to Japan for a recording project), and through the misty lens of memory I recall the service and comfort being far superior to the cattle-car treatment you get from most carriers today.
Apparently, nostalgia for this iconic brand lingers also in the mind of one Anthony Toth, a resident of Redondo Beach, California. Over the last 20 years Mr Toth has assembled, in his garage, a meticulous reconstruction of a Pan Am 747’s first-class cabin, using parts foraged from a jetliner junkyard in the Mojave Desert. Have a look here.
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Reading that link reminded me of something a Pan Am stewardess (yes I know, but) once related to me.
We were sitting in a Hong Kong bar and apparently she’d had an encounter with a “flasher.”
She told me she “strictly adhered to Pan Am’s policy on politeness” so she said to the fellow, “Oh you poor man, did that happen in Viet Nam?”