Originally Posted by joseph-GLA
I thought that the Lockerbie Bombing killed Pan Am. Is that too simplistic?
Lockerbie (December 1988) was about the tenth big spike in PA's coffin, and you could argue that it was the final lethal blow, but PA actually died from...
** Overcapacity (flooding routes with 747s during the '70s recession and the first oil shock)
** Lack of domestic feeder system (until deregulation all PA routes were international)
** Dumb purchase of National Airlines, post-deregulation, to acquire a domestic network when they could have just built their own
** Dumb fleet management (at one point they had 747s, DC10s, L1011s and A310s all on transats)
** Dumb route selloffs (they sold the Pacific to UA in the 1980s, which was a huge moneymaker, and held onto the north Atlantic for sentimental reasons despite terrible margins and crazy competition)
** Dumb Heathrow selloff
** Constant marketplace pressure they didn't know how to respond to
The airline was never a success in the post-deregulation world -- its glory days were mainly due to Juan Trippe's ability to butter up the world's governments -- but it was in trouble long before deregulation in 1977. An economist might argue that the 747 ultimately killed PA.