Juan Trippe
Juan Terry Trippe (born 27 July 1899, at Sea Bright, New Jersey, † April 3, 1981 in New York City ) was an American entrepreneur and founder of the former airline Pan American World Airways ( Pan Am).
Life
After he graduated from Yale in 1921, Trippe founded the Colonial Air Transport, and for the expansion of aviation in America, the Aviation Company of the Americas. Later, the name Pan Am developed what became Pan American World Airways. On August 28, 1927, the first flight of Pan Am took place. In the 1930s, Pan was the first airline that flew over the Pacific Am.
The company was hardly affected by the Second World War and grew into one of the largest airlines. Trippe received the Medal for Merit in 1946, at that time the highest civilian award of the USA.
Trippe is considered the inventor of Economy class (then tourist class ) looked and saw the late 1950s that the future of aviation would be revolutionized by jet aircraft. Then he bought one of the first McDonnell Douglas DC -8 and Boeing 707 for his company. The first flight on a Pan Am Boeing 707 took place in October 1958 from New York to Paris. With these larger aircraft succeeded Pan Am to carry more passengers faster and cheaper.
1965, Trippe the Boeing CEO Bill Allen commissioned a much larger plane than the Boeing 707 to build and was thus for the construction of the Boeing 747, the jumbo jet, responsible, which came into production in 1969. Trippe thought, however, the Boeing 747 would serve only as a cargo aircraft and later anyway replaced by a supersonic aircraft. This occurred - with the exception of the Concorde and the Tupolev Tu- 144 - not one, and the Jumbo Jet was the symbol of international aviation.
In 1968 Trippe gave up the management, but continued to participate in board meetings.
Trippe died in 1981 at the age of 81 years in New York and was buried in Brooklyn. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth (1904-1983) and four children. 1985 Ronald Reagan awarded him the Medal of Freedom. His company, Pan Am was bought in 1991 by Delta Airlines, with the original aim to rehabilitate it.
In 2004, Trippe was represented by Alec Baldwin in the movie The Aviator.