Pan Am Crowds Unfriendly Skies

NEW YORK CITY: Pan Am is back from the dead. Investors have raised $30 million to restart the engines of the historic airline that stalled out of business in 1991. Starting this summer, Pan Am will try to squeeze its way back into the crowded skies as a low-cost carrier with 400 to 500 employees, many of whom will be recruited from original Pan-Am workers who were laid off. The new company, which bought the rights to the Pan Am name at a bankruptcy auction for $1.3 million, will be headed by Martin Shugrue, chief operating officer of the old Pan Am. Can it maintain altitude? "There are already too many empty seats flying right now," says TIME's John Greenwald. "It is hard to see how another low-cost carrier can make it in such a crowded field. I will be surprised if they do not collapse again. Low-cost airlines simply do not make much money, especially when there is so much competition."