Airlines: The Last Pioneer

Back in 1927, the same year that Charles Lindbergh made his heroic solo flight across the Atlantic, a young Yale University graduate named Juan Terry Trippe founded a modest air service that shuttled mail between Florida and Cuba. Both events have loomed large in the history of aviation. Lindbergh's flight pointed up aviation's expanding potential, and Trippe's little business eventually grew into Pan American World Airways, the world's largest international airline. Last week in Manhattan, when Trippe, now 68, finally bowed out as Pan Am's boss, it seemed altogether fitting that Lindbergh,...

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