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In the bar of Lisbon's small and elegant Hotel Aviz, where most globe-trotters halt for a quick refresher, one wall is covered with the exploits of Diaz, Da Gama, Magellan and other great Portuguese explorers. On the opposite wall, a plaque pays tribute to the foremost explorer of the modern world of the air—Juan Terry Trippe. The plaque commemorates the rediscovery of the old world by the new: the first passenger flight of Trippe and his Pan American Airways Dixie Clipper from the U.S. to Lisbon on June 28, 1939.
Last week Juan Trippe was ready to guide his Pan American Airways in a great new adventure which would make the world every man's oyster. And like the old Portuguese captains, who held a last open house on their high-pooped ships before they sailed off, Juan Trippe was also showing off his newest ship of the air. The ship was a great, fat-bellied Boeing Stratocruiser, the first delivered to any airline. When it flew into Boston last week, it created the biggest stir since Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis landed there in 1927 on its triumphal tour.
Some 50,000 people ("a milling, surging, disorderly crowd," sniffed the surprised Boston Herald) broke through police lines to rubberneck at the world's newest and biggest (71¼ tons), fanciest and fastest (up to 375 m.p.h.) commercial airliner. When it paused at Hartford, 30,000 gawking sightseers eddied past its figure8 fuselage. At Chicago, crowds jostled for peeks at its spiral staircase and its underbelly cocktail lounge with fuchsia-colored seats. Then it headed for San Francisco, soon dropped down on the International Air Terminal.
Next week, wearing a crepe-paper lei on its shiny nose, it will take off for Honolulu, thus putting the first Stratocruiser into commercial service on the San Francisco-Honolulu eight-hour run. Next month a second plane will probably start on the New York-Bermuda run; by fall, Trippe's $30 million fleet of 20 Stratocruisers will be deployed over Pan American's global route pattern, boosting the airline's carrying capacity a huge 40%. They will further shrink a world which aviation long ago, for better or worse, made small.
Time & Money. With his new Boeings, Trippe hopes to revolutionize air travel, just as the Stratocruiser's older brother, the 6-29, rewrote the book on strategic bombing. Trippe wants to open the way to globe-trotting to millions.
It was the old luxury approach which limited travel by air. Trippe proclaims in his high and earnest voice: "The average man has been the prisoner of two keepers, time and money." Having conquered time, Trippe hopes to cut fares so that anybody with a two-week vacation —the Detroit auto mechanic and the Oak Park schoolmarm—can "spend it abroad. His eventual goal: a $200 round trip to London, with other foreign fares to match. He is ready to cut the present round trip London fare of $630 ($466.70 on a special winter rate) to $405, whenever his foreign and U.S. competitors will string along (they control fares on the North Atlantic through the International Air Transport Association). Such a cut would put it well under first-class steamer rates.*