Company profile
- Industry
- Airline
- Founded
- 1927
- Headquarters
- New York City, United States
- Ownership
- Defunct since 1991
Profiles are auto-generated and infrequently updated.
Decisions on record
2 verified Decision Cases on Pan Am, and the casebook each one belongs to.
| Fork date | Decision type | What Pan Am chose | Where it stood | The story | Casebook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1966 | Bet-the-Company | Order 25 jumbo jets | Pan Am ceased operations entirely on December 4, 1991 (1991-12) | Read the story → | Bet-the-Company Casebook → |
| 1980 | The Fall | Buy National Airlines | Pan Am ceased all operations (1991-12) | Read the story → | The Fall Casebook → |
Videos on Pan Am
Run one of these yourself
The decisions Pan Am faced, as kits you can run.
Each pack takes one of these decisions and gives you the framework, a deck for the room, a model that resolves to one number, and the sourced cases behind it. $499, one-time.
The analyses
The Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention
Lockerbie Accelerated a Pan Am Collapse Three Decades in the Making
A bomb over Scotland in 1988 is remembered as the moment Pan Am died. But the airline had just posted its most profitable quarter ever — Q3 1988 — while sitting on $2.6 billion of debt and $1.6 billion of assets. Lockerbie didn't cause the collapse. It accelerated one that was already three deregulated, over-leveraged decades in the making.
8 min
The Empire · Decision Forks
Pan Am Bet $525 Million on 25 Jumbo Jets. It Forgot to Build a Floor Under Them.
In 1966 Pan Am ordered 25 Boeing 747s for $525 million and launched the jet age. Every one of those seats was a naked bet on perpetual international growth - with no domestic feeder system to catch the fall. By 1969, the losses had already started.
8 min
Tools to try
- Ansoff move finderFramework: Ansoff Matrix
- Business model canvas builderFramework: Business Model Canvas
- Change readiness checkFramework: Kotter's 8-Step Change Model
- Five Forces scorerFramework: Porter's Five Forces
- SMART goal builderFramework: SMART Goals
- SWOT builderFramework: SWOT Analysis
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