Juan Trippe

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Juan Terry Trippe (born June 27, 1899 in Sea Bright , New Jersey , † April 3, 1981 in New York City ) was an American entrepreneur and founder of the former airline Pan American World Airways ( Pan Am ).

Life

After graduating from Yale in 1921 , Trippe founded Colonial Air Transport and the Aviation Company of the Americas for the expansion of aviation in America . Later the name Pan Am evolved into what became Pan American World Airways . The Pan Am's first flight took place on August 28, 1927. In the 1930s, Pan Am was the first airline to fly over the Pacific.

The company was hardly affected by the Second World War and grew into one of the largest airlines. Trippe received the Medal for Merit in 1946 , at that time the highest civilian award in the USA.

Trippe is considered the inventor of Economy Class (then still Tourist Class ) and in the late 1950s he noticed that the future of aviation would be revolutionized by jet aircraft. He was one of the first to buy a McDonnell Douglas DC-8 and Boeing 707 for his company. The first flight with a Pan Am Boeing 707 took place in October 1958 from New York to Paris. With these larger aircraft, Pan Am managed to move more passengers, faster and cheaper.

In 1965 Trippe gave the Boeing boss Bill Allen the order to build a much larger aircraft than the Boeing 707 and was thus responsible for the construction of the Boeing 747 , the Jumbo Jet , which went into production in 1969. However, Trippe thought the Boeing 747 would only serve as a cargo plane and would later be replaced by a supersonic aircraft anyway. With the exception of the Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144  , this did not happen, and the jumbo jet became the symbol of international aviation.

In 1968, Trippe gave up the management, but continued to attend board meetings.

In 1981 Trippe died in New York at the age of 81 and was buried in Brooklyn . He left behind his wife Elizabeth (1904-1983) and four children. In 1985 he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan . His company Pan Am was bought by Delta Airlines in 1991 with the original aim of redeveloping it.

In 2004, Trippe was portrayed by Alec Baldwin in the film Aviator .

Honors

Web links

Commons : Juan Trippe  - collection of images, videos and audio files