Originally Posted by
JDiver
“XYZ 001” is often a flagship flight for an airline. AA 1 was several flavors if transcon, iirc. Pan Am PA 001 when I took it flew a 707 around the world - one I recall iirc was SFO-HNL-HND, and from there it went on. PA 2 traveled the reverse, eastward. See PA 2 in 1966, a year I flew both, below.
PA was the first with round the world service, using a Lockheed L-749 Constellation, 17 June 1947. As PA didn’t hold domestic rights, PA 1 westbound originated in LAX or SFO and terminated at LGA (later, JFK). The final PA RTW was 1982. �� (My last Connie flights were on L-749 N121 operated by the then Federal Aviation Agency. ❤️)
AA only flew overseas briefly iirc using its subsidiary, American Overseas Ailrines, which it acquired in 1945 and sold to Pan Am in 1950 to become its Atlantic Division.
I flew PA 2 in 1980, 2 hops, BOM/BKK/HKG. Part of an itinerary MCT/ADL, while finding somewhere to stop-over to get an Australia visa ( in HKG). It all worked, despite the best efforts of a typhoon which at least gave me a roller-coaster approach to the old HKG, washing line caught on the starboard wing-tip (apocryphally), and that same wing-tip going way in the air after first touch-down.
Aged 22, I thought all this was normal..