A once great name will no longer be flying the skies. The airline that bought the Pan Am logo and operated under it for the past ten years has been found unfit to fly by the DOT according to The Boston Globe.
The original Pan Am went out of business in 1991 but the name was sold and flown by a new carrier a few years later. The latest venture in the Pan Am name has operated since 1998 out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
If you want to look up how NOT to run an airline, just read the scathing Air Line Pilots Association report that pleaded with the DOT to shut the airline down:
“[Pan Am] repeatedly discharged pilots because they were unwilling to fly in violation of FAA safety rules, repeatedly refused to comply with final and binding decisions of system boards of adjustment as required under the RLA and willfully violated environmental laws.”
The DOT apparently agreed, and said in a report last month that “we find that [Pan Am’s] authority to operate large aircraft was based on false financial information submitted to the department, without which the air carrier would not have been found fit to hold such authority when if first sought to expand,” the DOT order states. “We find further that [their] management knew, or should have known, about the false financial information and it, therefore … lacks the competence necessary to oversee the air transportation authorized in the air carrier’s certificate.”
As an example of Pan Am’s arrogance with regard to FAA law, in 2001 they fired Captain Don Simonds for refusing to continue a trip that would take him well past the FAA mandated maximum 16 hour duty day. The Airline Pilots Association was able to get Captain Simonds job back, but unions were eliminated at the company in 2004 when the carrier shut down and immediately reopened using a different operating certificate.
It’s too bad such a great name had to be tarnished by such incompetent management.