This week, Harteveldt, founder of San Francisco-based Atmosphere Research Group, will be choosing a specific glass from his extensive collection, one with an airline’s iconic logo — a glass featuring the instantly recognizable blue globe of Pan American World Airways.
It was 30 years ago on December 4, 1991, when Pan Am flew its final flight, after close to 65 years of globe-spanning operations.
And yet, although three decades have passed since the airline declared bankruptcy, the Pan Am brand still seems to resonate through current pop culture.
The Swinging ’60s
“We look back, admittedly, through a very filtered view of what travel was like when jets were new at the dawn of the jet age. Long-haul international travel was rare, and it was special,” says Harteveldt.
Pan Am was the launch customer for the first US passenger jet, the Boeing 707. In October 1958, the airline’s first 707 passenger flight from New York to Paris ushered in the “Jet Set.”
Those celebrities, stars and wealthy travelers, dressed in their finest, were often photographed coming down the stairs after a trip on a Pan Am jet.
When The Beatles landed in New York in 1964 for their first US television appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” they stepped off a Pan Am 707 named Clipper Defiance.
As part of the musical “British Invasion” of the time, the group could have been, and perhaps should have been, on a BOAC jet — British Overseas Airways Corporation, now British Airways — but they picked Pan Am.
“I think it was an intentional decision, that when the Beatles were coming to the US, they wanted to be seen getting off an airplane that was a US airline,” said Harteveldt.
The Beatles at London Airport — now Heathrow — on their way to America on Febuary 13, 1964.
Stan Meagher/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A powerful brand
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