AVIATION: The Big Deal

It was a well-kept secret. For several months, Pan American Airways' canny President Juan Terry Trippe had been dickering with American Airlines' Chairman C. R. Smith. But not till last week did any hint of the dickering leak out. This week, as Wall Street began to buzz with rumors, Juan Trippe sprang the news. American had agreed to sell Pan Am its transatlantic subsidiary, American Overseas Airlines.

The deal, in effect, indicated that Trippe might have been right in his campaign for a "chosen instrument" on the North Atlantic. Smith, who had fought Trippe's chosen instrument...

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