Pan Am: Fly around the World, 1952

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Your Clipper Trip

Published in 1952.

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Relief map of Pan Am's network made by Jeppesen & Company and Pan American World Airways Inc.

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Go East, Go West

Pan Am started offering arund the world flight as early as 1948 and you had a choice of flying either West or East bound. We are heading West. Come along.

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We start our journey in San Francisco. Our Clipper Jet is heading out over the Pacific.


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Our first stop is Honolulu, one of Pan Am's most popular destinations.

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We continue westbound to Tokyo via Wake Island. Today Wake Island houses a US military installation and is completely off-limits but it's also home to Albatrosses. When Pan Am set out to cross the Pacific, they would early on also land at Midway Atoll.

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From there the journey continues into Asia via Hong Kong, Bangkok, Calcutta and and Karachi sometimes stopping in Delhi.

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The journey continues west stopping in Beirut and Rome with onwards connection to Paris and London.

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The total journey time if you were doing this non-stop would take you a week of more or less constant flying.

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These long connecting flights were all avoiding both the Soviet Union and China at this stage as they were off-limits. It would take 28 years before Pan Am would finally serve Moscow in cooperation with Aeroflot.

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The flight would refuel in Shannon before crossing the Atlantic. BOAC also offered a round the world ticket, but Pan Am was the first airline to offer around the world tickets.

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Pan Am stopped using Gander for refueling in 1962, but by the mid 1950s some flights were already bypassing Newfoundland.

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We are almost full circle, another circumnavigation under our belt. Just a small matter of crossing the continental United States back to San Francisco, which Pan Am didn't do.

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We are back where we started a little over a week later.

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On the back of the map you would find an overview of the airline's destinations, including details about Hawaii and Wake Island.

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Wake Island, your next holiday destination.

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Another version of this map, possibly the best known, was published in 1956.

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