Juan Trippe: Creator of an American aviation empire
In March 1939, in anticipation of soon-to-be inaugurated regularly scheduled airliner service between the United States and Europe, the Tampa Tribune ran an article profiling then 39-year-old Pan Am founder, Juan Terry Trippe. The article is reprinted in its entirety, below.
At top: Juan Trippe, photo courtesy Pan Am Historical Foundation, http://www.panam.org
Center: Trippe with Charles Lindbergh, Miami, 1929. Photo courtesy UM Richter Library, Pan Am Digital Collection
Bottom: Trippe (center) with Andre Priester (left) and James Eaton, Miami, 1929. Photo courtesy UM Richter Library, Pan Am Digital Collection.
ONE MAN BUILT UP AIRLINES OF PAN AMERICAN
Trippe Makes Flights to Europe Possible
NEW YORK, March 25, 1939 (Associated Press)
A man who has built the world’s biggest air transport system from the nucleus of a 90-mile hop across the straits of Florida heads the first regular airline over the north Atlantic.
To Juan Trippe, president of Pan American Airways, goes the distinction of establishing service across the last ocean in the world to be conquered by airplanes flying by timetable.
Pilot, businessman and unofficial American diplomat in those foreign ports to which Pan American planes cruise on 55,000 miles of airways, Trippe will achieve an ambition of many years’ standing when the company begins selling tickets to Europe.
Pan American’s growth into the colossus of the air transportation world has taken only a little more than 10 years. The history of Trippe’s business deals since that day in 1926 when he induced a Whitney, a Rockefeller and a Vanderbilt to club in with him to establish the country’s first contract airmail route is the history of Pan American Airways.
He Is Pan American
Trippe is Pan American. He started it, nursed it along, fought its fights, clenched his pipe the tighter when costly crashes weighed heavily on the wrong side of the balance sheet, and saw it through to the establishment of service over the Atlantic.
Before spring is gone passengers will be flying to Europe in Trippe’s big winged boats, by far the largest in the commercial service of any nation. Trippe is the airline, and the airline is a symbol of American big business. More heavily than is generally advertised, big business has invested in Trippe’s baby. Trippe sold big business the idea. He sold the government the idea. Then he turned around and sold it to assorted officials in a couple of dozen countries where he needed landing facilities for his airplanes.
That is Trippe’s forte, selling. In effect he told business and the government, “Look here. Air transportation is going to change the complexion of the economic picture in just a few years. We need foreign trade. To compete in world markets we must have faster communication.
“To establish ourselves as the world’s foremost transoceanic air transport country is going to mean much in prestige, and prestige can be measured in dollars and cents. We have the skill and the knowledge to go ahead. How about it?”
Son of Banker
The son of a banker, graduated from Yale’s Sheffield scientific school only 19 years ago, Trippe acquired two valuable assets early in life — financial training and the support of a number of young men whom he knew in college.
After his schooling he tarried briefly in some banking houses. He owned a battered hydroplane familiar to residents of East Hampton, Long Island, and presently he bought three little planes of wartime vintage.
The “Jennies,” as the planes were dubbed during the war, became the flying equipment of the Long Island airways, Trippe’s initial venture into air transport. He was president and general manager. And a good flier, to boot.
Keeps License
He still keeps up his flying license.
In the summer he wings from his Long Island home into New York in a seaplane. Frequently he spreads a newspaper before him and reads it as he flies.
In 1926, now thoroughly committed to a career in aviation, he induced Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Percy Rockefeller and William H. Vanderbilt to help him form Colonial airways, to fly between New York and Boston.
He was vice president and general manager. Colonial became the first contract airmail route in the United States and the keystone of American airlines, the biggest of the present transcontinental lines.
In 1927 the group withdrew from Colonial to establish Pan American Airways.
Pan American had a modest birth. Its planes flew only from Key West to Havana. Its revenues were slight, its ambitions big. Daredevils–so the public said–who wanted to risk their necks in airplanes, bought tickets on Trippe’s machines and held their breaths over that 90 miles of open water.
The operation did not pay. Neither did the lines Trippe pushed on around the basin of the Caribbean. For three years Pan American showed deficit. Then Trippe’s fortunes changed. Under his careful nursing, Pan American began paying dividends.
Declared Profit
From 1931 straight through 1937, the company declared a profit. What it did in 1938 –the stock is listed now on the “big board” — has not yet been made public. But for eight years P.A.A. has been known as probably the best speculative investment among the domestically owned airlines.
That, his associates say, is a tribute to Trippe’s business sense.
The 39-year old president of the company has expanded his operations fast, as such things go in the air transport business, and still kept black ink on the books.
Across the Caribbean and deep into South America, Trippe’s airplanes flew. They crossed the equator, pushed into strange ports. They bounded across the South American continent to erase the costly loss of time in climbing the Andes by rail.
Other Pan American planes forged into Alaska to displace the dog teams which carried the mail.
By 1935 Pan American had begun flying the Pacific, first to Manila, then to Hongkong. The establishment of the Pacific route, with one jump alone, that from Oakland to Honolulu, of 2400 miles, the world’s longest single transport hop, supplies an insight into Trippe’s methods of operation.
European airplanes were pushing eastward into Asia, carrying business standards which were highly competitive with United States firms. Trippe went to his directors — and to the government — to answer the threat.
Came Through
Both came through. Pan American Airways became not only an unofficial diplomatic arm of Washington as it grooved its way into ports where good will means much to this country; its operations took on a national defense complexion.
Where Pan American flew, where it had established landing facilities, radio aids to navigation and weather services, army and navy planes could follow, if the need arose.
Trippe was a jump ahead of the field in realizing all that. He needed help, and he got it. He obtained a handsome figure for carting the mails.
In 1937 Trippe made two spectacular moves. He surveyed a route to New Zealand and sent a plane to Europe to look over the north Atlantic situation. The Atlantic is known as the “blue ribbon” route among the world’s transoceanic airways.
There, because of potential traffic and international prestige, the real profits, and those profits which do not appear on the balance sheets, lie.
Ultimate Goal
In flying the Atlantic, Trippe is achieving his ultimate goal. Everything that has gone before has been foundation work. But the story must be pieced together. Trippe’s publicity staff, headed by a man whom Trippe characteristically absorbed into his own organization when the latter was running a competitive airline, supplies air the general outlines.
Certainly Trippe himself won’t. This boyish, shrewd diplomat-businessman rarely grants an interview, rarely makes an address. When he does either, the listener comes away with a feeling that the language must have been invented solely to serve Trippe’s genius for saying nothing in a magnificent manner.
His ability to anticipate and head off questions is dazzling. He combines it with a shyness which is almost legendary in the Chrysler building, where it is not unusual for him to be the first to open his office in the morning and the last to leave at night.
He chooses able subordinates. Andre Priester, his chief engineer, who is actually the whole technical half of the company team, is one of the most gifted men in, the transport business.
Trippe hired Lindbergh early in the game. It was a brilliant move. Lindbergh combined a million dollars’ worth of advertising value with sound technical skill. It was Lindbergh who first skipped across the Atlantic for Trippe, preparing the way for later survey flights.
Trippe learned to fly during the war when he served briefly in the naval air service. His father was Charles White Trippe, his mother Lucy A. Terry, whose family in earlier generations had a Latin strain. Hence the “Juan” — after a beloved Aunt Juanita in Venezuela.
“An interview with Juan Trippe?” W.I. Van Dusen, Trippe’s publicity man, will echo to a question. Van Dusen is one of the ablest men in the business. That’s one of the reasons Trippe hired him. He laughs.
“All right, the line forms to the right. But it never moves.”