While not a perfect t Pan Am’s biggest
international hub was New York’s John F
Kennedy International Airport, whereas
National had more of a southern accent.
The bigger obstacle to acquisition was that
National was an enticing proposition for
the ambitious upstart Texas International
Airlines, which quickly acquired 24.6% of
National’s shares.
Pan Am emerged the winner after a
bidding war, paying $437m to buy National
Airlines and officially taking control of
the airline on January 7, 1980. Although
National possessed a valuable infrastructure
and a eet of 43 Boeing 727s (19 of the -135
variant and 24 stretched -235s) and 16 DC-
10s (11 of the -10 variant and ve long-range
-30s) Seawell had overpaid.The deal, initially trumpeted as ‘the coup
of the decade’ soon became better known
as ‘Seawell’s folly’. With the added cost of
painting over the eet, rebranding the stations
and merging two workforces, the total cost
to Pan Am was at least half a billion dollars –
more than $1.5bn in today’s money.
Pan Am was mainly focused on the
Boeing 747 for its widebody eet, however
four months before the takeover of National
it ordered 12 Lockheed L1011-500 TriStars.
These were for long-haul routes that didn’t
have enough passengers to justify a 747.
The rst example, N504PA, arrived on April
11, 1980 and went into service on the New
York JFK to Bogota route. Many routes,
especially on the Atlantic, saw TriStar and
DC-10-30 service interchangeably.http://www.aviation-news.co.uk 65Above: McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 N68NA in 1973 when serving with National Airlines.
Jacques Barbé - Guy Van Herbruggen Collection
Left: One of Pan Am’s DC-10-10s landing at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport.
R Verschuur - Guy Van Herbruggen CollectionAbove: Pan Am used the DC-10-30s on some of its international services. Aircraft N81NA is
seen at Frankfurt in August 1982. Guy Van Herbruggen Collection64-67_dc10DC.mfDC.mfDC.indd 65 07/04/2016 12:43