Together at Last

Pan American World Airways President Juan Terry Trippe moved a step closer this week to a goal he has long espoused: a single U.S. airline on the North Atlantic. For $17.4 million, Pan Am took over the assets of American Overseas Airlines. It was the biggest merger in U.S. airline history, and left T.W.A. as Pan Am's only domestic competitor.

Preparations for the event were in keeping with its size. Thirty days ago, a 25-man team of Pan Am lawyers and accountants left for Europe to begin the job of totting up A.O.A.'s assets, preparing receipts in 14 languages for A.O.A. bank accounts, runway permits, some 35,000 spare parts. Pilots of A.O.A. planes were issued 6-by 12-inch signs reading: "This aircraft is the property of, and operated by, Pan American World Airways." The signs were to be hung in passenger compartments the instant the merger took place.

The merger gives Pan Am 2,502 extra route miles and an opportunity to capture 33% of the transatlantic traffic. Pan Am will now stop in ten additional cities in Iceland, Scotland, Germany, Holland and Scandinavia, will go to Paris and Rome within a month. With the help of the 18 four-engine airplanes (DC-4s, Stratocruisers and Constellations) that it acquired in the deal, Pan Am stepped up weekly transatlantic crossings from 22 to 29. Juan Trippe still did not think its 144-plane fleet big enough. To replace aging DC-4s on the South American run, Pan Am last week signed a $21 million contract for 18 new four-engine Douglas DC-6Bs,* to be delivered in 1951.

*A late-model DC-6 which can go 25 m.p.h. faster and carry as many as 22 more passengers (total: 80).

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