Originally Posted by
jspira
and continued with the poor timing of the National acquisition immediately prior to deregulation, which made the acquisition unnecessary and a burden due to difficulties in integrating the two airlines.
Perfectly true. And Pan Am's coffin was sealed by the rise of the 767 and ETOPS twins which enabled "long, thin" TATL routes to/from secondary markets. The whole Pan Am domestic network in the '80s was mostly for getting people all across America to JFK to connect with overseas 747s at the WorldPort. Suddenly there was no point to any of it; you could fly nonstop from where you started.