Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport is a joint civil-military international airport located in suburban Carolina, Puerto Rico, three miles (5 km) southeast of San Juan. It is named for Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rico's first democratically elected governor, and was known as Isla Verde International Airport until it was renamed in February 1985. It is the busiest airport in the Caribbean region by passenger traffic. Over 4 million passengers board a plane at the airport per year according to the Federal Aviation Administration, making it the 48th busiest airport overseen by said federal agency.
The Tenerife airport disaster occurred on March 27, 1977, when two Boeing 747 passenger jets collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife. The collision occurred when KLM Flight 4805 initiated its takeoff run during dense fog while Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway. The impact and resulting fire killed all on board KLM Flight 4805 and most of the occupants of Pan Am Flight 1736, with only 61 survivors in the front section of the aircraft. With a total of 583 fatalities, the accident is the deadliest accident in aviation history.
Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport, also commonly known as Isla Grande Airport, is an airport in Isla Grande, a district in the municipality of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It is owned by the Puerto Rico Ports Authority and is adjacent to the Puerto Rico Convention Center, the San Juan Bay, and the Pan American Cruise Ship Terminal, and overlooks Cataño. While Isla Grande's main activity is general aviation, it is still a commercial airport, handling domestic and international commercial flights.
The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a large long-range airliner developed from the C-97 Stratofreighter military transport, itself a derivative of the B-29 Superfortress. The Stratocruiser's first flight was on July 8, 1947. Its design was advanced for its day; its relatively innovative features included two passenger decks and a pressurized cabin. It could carry up to 100 passengers on the main deck plus 14 in the lower deck lounge; typical seating was for 63 or 84 passengers or 28 berthed and five seated passengers.
The Douglas DC-7 is an American transport aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1953 to 1958. A derivative of the DC-6, it was the last major piston engine-powered transport made by Douglas, being developed shortly after the earliest jet airliner—the de Havilland Comet—entered service and only a few years before the jet-powered Douglas DC-8 first flew in 1958. Unlike other aircraft in Douglas's line of propeller-driven aircraft, no examples remain in service in the present day, as compared to the far more successful DC-3 and DC-6.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1952:
The Sikorsky S-42 was a commercial flying boat designed and built by Sikorsky Aircraft to meet requirements for a long-range flying boat laid out by Pan American World Airways in 1931. The innovative design included wing flaps, variable-pitch propellers, and a tail-carrying full-length hull. The prototype first flew on 29 March 1934, and, in the period of development and test flying that followed, quickly established ten world records for payload-to-height. The "Flying Clipper" and the "Pan Am Clipper" were other names for the S-42.
Pan Am Flight 845 was a Boeing 747-121, registration N747PA, operating as a scheduled international passenger flight between Los Angeles and Tokyo, with an intermediate stop at San Francisco International Airport.
In aviation, a water landing is, in the broadest sense, an aircraft landing on a body of water. Seaplanes, such as floatplanes and flying boats, land on water as a normal operation. Ditching is a controlled emergency landing on the water surface in an aircraft not designed for the purpose, a very rare occurrence. Controlled flight into the surface and uncontrolled flight ending in a body of water are generally not considered water landings or ditching.
The Martin M-130 was a commercial flying boat designed and built in 1935 by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland, for Pan American Airways. Three were built: the China Clipper, the Philippine Clipper and the Hawaii Clipper. All three had crashed by 1945. A similar flying boat design called the Martin 156) and named Russian Clipper, was built for the Soviet Union; it had a larger wing and twin vertical stabilizers.
Pan Am Flight 6 was a round-the-world airline flight that ditched in the Pacific Ocean on October 16, 1956, after two of its four engines failed. Flight 6 left Philadelphia on October 12 as a DC-6B and flew eastward to Europe and Asia on a multi-stop trip. On the evening of October 15 the flight left Honolulu on a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser Clipper named Sovereign Of The Skies. The accident was the basis for the 1958 film Crash Landing.
Pan Am Flight 816 was an international flight from Auckland, New Zealand, to San Francisco, California, via Tahiti, French Polynesia, and Los Angeles, California. It was operated by a Pan Am Boeing 707-321B bearing the registration N417PA and named Clipper Winged Racer. On July 22, 1973, at 10:06 P.M. local time, the Boeing 707 took off from Faa'a International Airport in Papeete. Thirty seconds after takeoff, the airliner, carrying 79 passengers and crew, crashed into the sea.
Pan Am Flight 1-10 was a Pan American passenger flight from London to Shannon Airport, part of a flight around the world from San Francisco, California, to New York City. On 15 April 1948, the Lockheed Constellation serving the flight crashed 725 meters (2,379 ft) short of Runway 23 at Shannon. Ten flight crew and 20 passengers died in the crash; 1 passenger survived with minor injuries.
The Seaplane Baby Clipper NC 16933 Crash took place in Rio de Janeiro on August 13, 1939. The aircraft, owned by Pan Am, was flying Miami-Rio, with stops in the cities of Antilla, Port-au-Prince, San Pedro de Macorís, San Juan, Port of Spain, Georgetown, Paramaribo, Cayenne, Belém, São Luís, Fortaleza, Natal, João Pessoa, Recife, Maceió, Aracaju, Salvador, Caravelas and Vitória. This would be the first accident of a Pan Am aircraft in Brazil.
Pan Am Flight Clipper Panama, Douglas DC-6B N5026K, was a cargo flight from Frankfurt to New York City. On 22 June 1959 it caught fire on takeoff and was destroyed. All six flight crew and two passengers survived.
Pan Am Flight 799 was an international cargo flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Cam Ranh Airport in South Vietnam that crashed on December 26, 1968, near Anchorage, Alaska. The aircraft involved was a Boeing 707-321C aircraft operated by Pan American World Airways. All three crew members died in the crash.
N747PA, was the registration of a Boeing 747-121. Also known as "Clipper Juan T. Trippe", it was the second 747 ever built. It was purchased by Pan Am on October 3, 1970. Following an accident in 1971, the aircraft continued service with Pan Am until the airline's collapse in 1991. It served as a freighter until 1997 when it was used as a source of spare parts. In 2000, it was purchased by a South Korean couple and converted into a restaurant. After laying abandoned for years following the restaurant's failure in 2005, the aircraft was finally scrapped in 2010.
Aviation in Puerto Rico has a complex and long history, almost as long as the history of aviation itself. Puerto Rican aviation history has been filled with events, well-known characters and airline companies which have shaped the country's transportation services and the way people travel between cities and to other countries.
