Pan American World Airways' ticketed passengers scrambled to rebook flights nationwide Thursday, a difficult task during the heaviest travel time of the year. Meanwhile, 7,500 Pan Am employees found themselves out of work three weeks before Christmas.
It was a sad ending for an airline that pioneered commercial aviation. Pan Am abruptly shut down Wednesday after losing its battle to stay in business. A refinancing plan with Delta Air Lines failed when Delta declared it would no longer "pour money down a black hole."In Utah, the impact of Pan Am's shutdown was negligible because the airline had earlier canceled its two flights out of Salt Lake International Airport.
Airport spokesman John Wheat said Pan Am operated two domestic flights to New York out of Salt Lake City up until Sept. 4, when it discontinued the service.
"We haven't noticed any impact," said Wheat. "We assume the passengers that were using Pan Am are now using our other carriers for their travel needs."
Pan Am had subleased terminal space from another carrier at Salt Lake International up until its September departure from the airport.
The Wednesday shutdown stranded thousands of passengers around the country, including 100 people removed from a flight to the Dominican Republic just before takeoff from New York's Kennedy Airport.
In Miami, several passengers complained to Pan Am ticket agent E. Dunham that they couldn't get on other flights.
Several airlines said they would honor Pan Am tickets. But finding comparable flights during the busy holiday season is going to be difficult for many, said John Lindsey, a Pan Am vice president.
"Obviously," he said, "it's going to be tight."
"We're all in shock," he added. "It's very, very tough for a 64-year-old airline and all the people who have gone through this."
Many employees left jobless were in the process of transfer-ring to Miami from other cities as part of a plan to transform the carrier into a smaller airline focusing on Latin America. That plan fell apart on Tuesday.
Pilot Terry Barnes got the news when he radioed from the air for the gate numbers of connecting flights. He was told there wouldn't be any connecting flights.
Harry Tomisaka, a 23-year fleet service veteran from San Francisco, walked into work Wednesday - payday - and found he no longer had a job. "We came up to work and they just told us we couldn't go in," he said.
Pan Am became the third U.S. airline to die this year, after Eastern and Midway, amid deep industrywide troubles brought on by the gulf war and the recession. Pan Am bookings also were crippled by the 1988 terrorist bombing of Flight 103 over Scotland.
The death blow came on Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court when Delta Air Lines cut off financing to keep Pan Am in the air. Delta said it did not believe Pan Am's business plan would work at a time when losses were about $2 million a day and bookings were plunging.
Luz Rodriguez of Puerto Rico, a retired Pan Am office worker, had taken a break from chemotherapy treatment for a trip to Orlando when the end came for Pan Am.
"I said, `I'm going to go for a ride before I die.' And look what happened," she said. She and her husband arrived at Miami Airport on one of the airline's last flights. The couple continued their trip on American Airlines and got there less than three hours late.
Pan Am was founded in 1927 and inaugurated the first scheduled international flight - a mail run between Key West, Fla., and Havana, Cuba - the first scheduled trans-Pacific service (1935), and the first scheduled trans-Atlantic service (1939).