SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast, brought to you by the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York. This podcast and our museum are dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the world's most iconic airline, Pan American World Airways. My name is Tom Betty, and I'm the host of this program. Thank you for joining us. The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Ammuseum.org. Again, our website is the Panamuseum.org. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. If you are using Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a review. It will help others discover this program. This podcast is sponsored by the generous personal support of Mr. Adam Aaron, the CEO and chairman of AMC Theaters. He is also president of our sister organization, the Pan Am Historical Foundation. If you're not familiar with Pan Am, welcome. We are honored to have you here, and for you to learn about what we're all about. If you already know of Pan Am, worked for, or flown on the airline, or just love our history, it's good to be with you again. So with that, let's get this episode in the air, so to speak. Welcome aboard your Pan American jet clipper. There is a link in the episode description to purchase this book from the Pan Am Museum store, where all proceeds go to preserving Pan Am history. But first, let's talk about the art of storytelling, an exciting new announcement for Pan Am enthusiasts, and one of the most unbelievable Pan Am stories you'll hear, involving a cat named Felix, a Pan Am 747 named Clipper Bell of the Sky, and 29 Days that took the cat nearly 180,000 miles around the world. We'll get to that story in a bit, but I have a question for you. What does it take to bring untold history to life? The stories don't disappear, they just need the right storyteller to make them interesting, to make them matter, to make listeners who never thought they cared about a particular moment in time suddenly realize they can't stop listening. For me, the answer has been five years of volunteer work, driven purely by passion. With almost 200,000 downloads, over 80 hours of content, and listeners in over 180 countries, I'm very proud of what this program has become. As the creator, host, and executive producer of the Pan Am Podcast, I've built an award-winning program that has earned a consistent five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and reached audiences on every continent. But these numbers only tell part of the story. The Pan Am Podcast uses the history of Pan American World Airways, the airline that practically invented modern commercial aviation as we know it, as the lens for exploring the defining moments of the 20th century. I've researched and produced episodes covering Pan Am's role in World War II, the dawn of global terrorism in the early 1970s, Cold War era government evacuation missions from Saigon and Tehran, the Tenerife Airport Disaster, supersonic jetliners, the Locker B bombing, and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, alongside the glamour and romance of the jet age, stories from Pan Am passengers, and the remarkable people who worked at 35,000 feet, or on the ground for one of history's most iconic airlines. The show has also attracted an extraordinary roster of guests, like actor and activist George Takay, ABC News veteran Sam Donaldson, former Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Steve Ford, son of President Gerald R. Ford, actor Philip Keene, Top Gun screenwriter Jack Epps Jr., and authors Lori Gwynne Shapiro, Frank Abnicknale, and Dwight Chapin of Watergate fame, just to name a few. And for the record, every single one of my guests have been extraordinary. But there's one thing I think I've proven. And that is history doesn't have to live in textbooks or lecture halls. Done well, it can reach anyone, anywhere, and make them care deeply about meaningful stories they never knew they were missing. That's what I set out to build. And since you're still listening, I think we can say we've both done it together, creator and listener. And with that, I also want to share some news with you before the Felix the Cat story and our interview with Al Gilbert. Two updates actually. The first is exciting because if you haven't guessed already, I'll always be a big kid at heart. Lego has just released the Lego Icons Douglas DC3 Pan Am Airliner, a 1,903-piece collectible model recreating the legendary 1930s twin-engine aircraft that helped shape commercial aviation. The set features a detailed cockpit and passenger cabin, retractable landing gear, and four exclusive minifigures in historically inspired Pan Am uniforms, a pilot, a purser, a stewardess, and a flight attendant, all with a display stand and information plaque and a dedicated Pan Am minifigure display. It is now available from Lego. If you are either a Pan Am fan, which I'm sure you are if you're listening to this, or a Lego fan, or both, like me, this new set was made for you. The second announcement is a bit more personal. I am now down to a handful of episodes left to publish before I say goodbye. After five years, I will be hanging up my microphone at the end of May. It has been one of the great privileges of my life to bring these stories to you, and I'm determined to make every remaining episode count. I again sincerely thank you for listening. Either if you are a newer listener that just discovered us, or if you've been listening for five years since the beginning, I can't say thank you enough. Which brings us to the Felix the Cat story. Imagine you land at Los Angeles International Airport after a long transatlantic flight. You claim your luggage and everything is there, except your cat. That is exactly what happened to Bill and Janice Quebec in December of 1987. And what followed was one of the most remarkable animal stories I've ever heard. One that touched down on three continents, logged nearly 180,000 miles, and brought out the very best of Pan American World Airways into focus for the entire world to see. Let's go back to the beginning. Bill and Janice were an American military family in the process of transferring from Frankfurt, West Germany to California. On December 3rd, they boarded Pan Am's Clipper Flight 151, Frankfurt to Los Angeles. With them was their cat, Felix, a name that, as you'll hear, turned out to be almost ironically appropriate. Janice had made sure Felix had a larger carrier, plenty of room to move around, comfortable. She told the Pan Am Clipper newsletter later, and I'm paraphrasing here, that she wanted Felix to have space even if it meant riding in the cargo hold. That was the trade-off, that was the plan. But as many things go in life, things don't go according to plan. When Clipper 151 touched down in Los Angeles and the Quebeces went to claim Felix, they found the carrier, but it was empty. Felix was gone. For Janice, this moment was particularly devastating. She had been born in Ireland, and this was her first time setting foot in the United States. She was already nervous, already taking an enormous life change, and now this. She later said she broke down and cried right there in the terminal. They filed a lost baggage report with the airline, they held out hope, and the days started passing. 28 of them to be exact. Now here is where the story shifts, because while the Quebecis were in California hoping for a miracle, Felix was quietly and possibly living inside the belly of a Pan Am 747, specifically aircraft N727PA, Clipper Bell of the Sky. And he was going everywhere. London, Frankfurt, Dulles, back to London, back to Frankfurt. Round and round the Pan Am system, tucked behind a sidewall covering in the cargo hold, surviving on nothing anyone could account for in the climate controlled dark of a transatlantic workhorse. It was New Year's Eve when the cat was first spotted. Tony War was working on the ramp at London's Heathrow Airport, loading bags into the belly of that 747 when he saw a small shadow in the compartment. What was it? A raccoon, a large rat. A cat? Yes, it's a cat. In the cargo hold of a giant 747. Load service lead David Hockey confirmed it, clearly a cat, retreating behind the sidewall covering as the flight was nearly ready to depart. Duty controller Brian Plethrow notified Frankfurt to try to catch the cat when the aircraft arrived there. The plane landed, the crews had their orders, and were determined. But Frankfurt couldn't catch the cat. The aircraft came back to London, still no luck, despite a search by several loaders joined by weight and balance supervisor Jane Ford, who volunteered because, as she puts it, she loves cats. The aircraft then continued on to Dulles. The next morning, back in Frankfurt again, the cat surfaced and was spotted. Frankfurt called Brian back in London, but they couldn't catch the cat. Finally, back in London, load serviceman Richie Callagi, with the help of a quarantine station employee, coaxed the cat out of hiding. Finally, success. The cat was secured. He was thin, but he was still alive. Now, if you know anything about the United Kingdom's animal quarantine regulations, you know that what happened next was not very simple. The cat was taken immediately to the Heathrow quarantine station. And that is where Jane Ford enters the story in a much larger way. Jane went to see the cat. She fell in love with him immediately. She named him Amelia Earhart, and given that this was the cat who had apparently been flying the world undetected for nearly a month, that name is hard to argue with. Jane began nursing Amelia back to health, but the quarantine rules presented a hard and urgent reality. Pan Am was directed to return the cat to its owner immediately, or the cat would be destroyed. The clock was ticking, and no one knew who the owner was. Brian sent out tracer wires to the Pan Am network. Jerry Murphy at Operations Control at JFK did the same. No answers came back. Brian reached out to Newswire, the internal Pan Amployee Communications Network, and word spread across the global Pan Am family. Donations started coming in toward the quarantine fee, which in British pounds translated to roughly 1,300 US dollars for a six-month stay. Jane offered to adopt the cat herself and cover that cost if no owner was found. But here is where the story becomes something more than a heartwarming rescue. At JFK, Reza Amani, manager of Central Baggage Tracing, and lead agent Phyllis Seskin, assigned to the Central Tracing Unit, had been following the Newswire reports. Phyllis, another cat lover, as this story seems to keep producing, recognized something the computer system could not tell her. Animals, she realized, were not traced through the baggage computer the way lost bags were. There was no automated search for a missing pet in the Pan Am computer system. So she did all the detective work by hand, determined. Phyllis went through lost baggage claim forms manually, one by one, until she found it. A report filed in Los Angeles in early December of 1987. A cat reported missing upon arrival. She followed up on the lead. She reached Janice Quebec in California. Together they pieced it together with a description of the cat, and Janice agreed it was Felix. Jane Ford was notified in London. Operation Felix was set in motion. And then the story went, as we would call today, viral. Pan Am's Corporate Communications Office offered the tale to the Associated Press in Los Angeles. The wire story was picked up by major newspapers around the world. Radio and television followed. Jane Ford and Felix, or Amelia, depending on which name you prefer, were photographed and interviewed in London. And Jane made a quick decision. She was going to personally accompany Felix on the flight home to Los Angeles. First class, but of course. On January 21, 1988, 49 days after Felix vanished in the cargo hold of a Pan Am 747, Jane and Felix boarded Clipper 121 at Heathrow with dozens of reporters and photographers in tow. When they touched down at LAX, they were whisked through customs and immigration. More than 40 journalists were waiting. And there, in the arrivals hall, Janice Kebecki was reunited with her beloved cat. Even Johnny Carson picked up the story for his Tonight Show monologue. Here's some data that was made available courtesy of a computerized flight summary pulled together by Operations Control at JFK. In the 29 days Felix spent aboard Clipper Bell of the Sky, he logged 179,189 miles across 64 flight segments, totaling 377 hours and 51 minutes of flying time. Felix the Cat had visited nearly every 747 station in the Pan Am system, many of them several times. And there's something I want to leave you with before we move on. This story is often told as a charming footnote. A cat who accidentally flew around the world. And it is charming. But look at who made the ending possible. A ramp worker in London who noticed something in the hold. A duty controller who kept following up across continents, a weight and balance supervisor who volunteered her own time because she cares about animals. A tracing agent at JFK who set aside the computer and picked up a pen. A load serviceman who was patient enough to lure a frightened and exhausted animal out of hiding. None of them had to do any of that. There was no job description that covered any of it. That is what Pan Am was at its best. Not just a route system, not just a fleet of 747s, it was the people inside that system. The ones who, when a small animal was cold and scared and lost somewhere in the cargo hold of a transatlantic aircraft, kept looking until they found him and kept caring until he got home to his family. That story ran around the world in January of 1988 and still holds up. And that is the perfect note on which to introduce today's guest, because Al Ace Gilbert understands that better than most. His book, Pan Am Stories, You Can't Make This Up, is exactly what the title promises. I'd like to welcome to the program Al Gilbert, also known as Ace. Al, I've known you for some time. Where did the nickname Ace come from?

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Hi, Tom. Uh, the nickname Ace I inherited from my father. My father, just to brag a little bit, went to Harvard. And what he loved doing was newspaper writing, and he was a reporter for the Harvard Crimson. And he did such a good job writing mostly exposes about the faculty that he got the uh reputation and nickname of an ace reporter for the college newspaper. So when I was born, I was little ace and he was big ace. And that was basically the legal name that I took with me to the Virgin Islands where I grew up.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Oh, so I didn't realize you you grew up in the Virgin Islands. Where where were you born? Let's start there.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

I was born uh in Great Neck, New York, and about the age of four, my parents divorced, and my mother moved down to St. Thomas with myself and my older brother because that's where her only family was. She was n from Norway, and her twin sister uh had married a Danish sea captain and moved to um had moved to St. Thomas in 1946. So with uh a divorced mother with two children with no place to go, she came down to the Virgin Islands.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Interesting. And how long did you go to high school there? Or how long were you in the Virgin Islands?

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Uh-huh. I went I went to uh kindergarten, primary, secondary, high school through uh the ninth grade, my freshman year, and then I completed my last three years in on the mainland at what's called Northfield Mount Herman School in western Massachusetts. At the time it was simply known as Mount Herman because there are two separate schools, Northfield for Girls and Mount Herman for Boys. Uh so I spent my last three years there. Uh, just as an aside, I've been invited um to go back to my original high school in St. Thomas, known as Antilly School. Uh, I'm going back in June to deliver the commencement address.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Oh, fun. Very fun. So originally you wanted to be a Pan Am flight attendant. Tell us about that story.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Yeah, so uh I grew up in, as I said, in St. Thomas. St. Thomas and the Virgin Islands, uh, the primary industry is tourism. So I was very familiar with uh with people coming and going. I remember Pan Am jets flying in and out, cargo ships and cruise ships coming and going. My uncle and my stepfather worked for the West Indian Company where all the ships would come in. So I had a kind of a wanderlust from an early age. And then as I was graduating college, I thought, well, you know, maybe this is a good time. I have no obligations. This is a good time to get into the travel business. And of course, in 1973, when I was graduating, you know, Pan Am was the brand icon for international travel. So I said, let me apply there. So I my college was Drew, DREW University in New Jersey, right across the river. So it was easy to go into Manhattan, and I got an interview at the Pan Am Building. I knew that uh having a second language was a requirement, and I had studied German uh in uh in college. Um so I remember interviewing with a very nice woman, and we spoke about, you know, we spoke in English obviously for a while, and she said, Your German your language is German, so let's converse in German. I said, Great. So we started trying to talk in German. She she was good, and I was never not very good. After about seven minutes of suffering, she said, you know, Mr. Gilbert, your German is about good enough to find a toilet. So I don't think there's a future here at Pan Am for you. I said, Thank you very much, and off I went. So that was 1973, and it wasn't until 1978 that I tried again, uh, this time in a purely English speaking role. And what role was that? I was hired in reservations. Okay. And a couple a couple of s a couple of the stories in the book come from my reservation experience.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

So tell us a little bit about what it was like to work for Pan Am in that role in The late 1970s?

SPEAKER_02 22:02

A couple of things. First of all, it was my first experience with computers. Pan Am had created what was then known as a Panamax system. You know, it's a closed-end computer system. It's not like the computers of today. So I had to take, we all had to take a two-week training course in that language. And it was, and it was a very specific uh language like Cobalt or Fortran. It wasn't free texting. It was all about it was all a matter of uh cross Lorraines and dots and asterisk and it was a formula to it. So I passed that test. And then I remember we were being, I think the union wage in 1978 was a princely sum of $5.75 an hour. So nobody was there to get rich. But we all shared a passion for travel. Um we all shared a passion for sales. We were lined up in in rows, banks and rows of computer terminals. We had various shifts. Uh depending upon your seniority, you either got the worst or best shift. So I could I would work anything from 7 to 4, 12 to 8, 4 to midnight. I never got I never got what they call the swing shift from midnight to 8 a.m. Because that was ironically the most one of the most popular shifts to have. But I worked virtually everything else. And then later uh I moved from reservations into what they call the rate desk, uh, where we manually calculated international tariffs according to according to the itinerary. Was this all in the Pan Am building? All in the Pan Am Building. I can't remember. I I'm gonna say it was the seventh floor. Okay. Um I can't, I'm not exactly sure. And uh all in the Pan Am Building, everything was there. And I worked there from 78 to 81, and then in 1981, uh I was fortunate to get the opportunity to transfer to San Francisco. And I moved out here and I worked for Pan Am 81 to 85. And that building was uh called was one one California Street, right downtown. And that that building housed both the reservations office on one floor and the sales office on the on the two floors above. And I did the same rollout here, uh reservations and uh rate deaths. I left in 85 because at that time the mechanics went on strike in the United States. And most strikes back in those days were like 48-hour flues. Uh they walked out, the airlines and the unions would reach an agreement, probably because back in those days when the CAB approved fares, this is before deregulation, uh, whatever agreement the airlines and unions came to was simply passed along to the consumer in terms of uh approved fares. But in 85, you were into the deregulation period. So it was much more difficult for unions and and uh and management to get together. So that that strike went on for I think at least a month, maybe six, five weeks. And by the time it was over, you know, I had no idea if I had a job or not. I had interviewed with um Thomas Cook travel and towards the end of that period. And I remember distinctly on Wednesday, on the Wednesday of that week, Thomas Cook offered me a job to start the following Monday. Two days later, on Friday, Pan Am called me and said, come back to work on Monday. And I said, No, I don't think so. So that's that's how I left. And it turned out to be fortuitous because I think two years later uh Pan Am closed the reservation office in San Francisco.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Let's take a quick break and listen to a report on the strike Al just mentioned. This clip is from ABC News on February 28th, 1985.

SPEAKER_04 25:48

A strike has all but shut down the nation's third largest airline, Pan American. Today, 7,500 Pan Am workers, including baggage handlers and mechanics, walked off the job. Pan Am has been running in the red for several years, but the workers say they have already given up enough. As ABC Stone Phillips reports, the company is insisting on more concessions.

SPEAKER_05 26:09

The pickets were noisy today. The terminals were not. Both sides say this strike comes at the worst possible time. The company's still losing money, workers tired of making concessions. The question now is how long the strike will last and whether Pan Am can survive it. Stone Phillips, ABC News, New York.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

That news clip from ABC News gives an interesting snapshot to the challenges Pan Am and its employees were facing during a turbulent economic situation in 1985 when Al decided it was better for him to leave the company for another opportunity. Now back to our interview with Al Gilbert, author of the book Pan Am Stories. You can't make this up. Three or four years ago, you invited me out to speak at your holiday luncheon, and you have a very active retiree group of Pan Am people that you lead in San Francisco. Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

That's that's a group that I learned about later, um, in later in life, if you were. Uh when the company first closed in 91, a woman by the name of uh Vicky Bloomquist organized a reunion every year of mostly Pan Am reservations and salespeople. Uh we didn't, you know, because we were so isolated between downtown San Francisco and the airport, it wasn't impossible, but I did not know a lot of people who worked in flight service or cockpit or maintenance or any of that stuff. Um but some years later, a group of people, I think under the leadership of Ray McIntyre, uh organized what was then known as the Pan Am Retirees Association. And I learned of it and started going to the meetings, and then uh, I don't know, maybe seven years ago, Ray wanted to sort of step back and he asked me if I would take over management leadership of it, and I did. And that group, sometimes we can get as many of 100 people, but we average between around maybe 80 people, which is not bad. Uh, but that's really a collection of everybody, uh, sales, account management, reservations, airport, anyone who worked at the airport, and members of World Wings. So it's a pretty good, pretty good community. And just as you mentioned, uh, we have it's a luncheon, the first Saturday of every December, and we always feature a speaker, and and and you were very kind enough to come out and speak to us on one particular year. And we've had a variety of people, most all related to Pan Am, uh to Pan Am history.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Very good. So you left Pan Am in 85, and then you went to go work for Thomas Cook. Tell us a little bit more about your career, and then we'll get to talking about your book.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

Yeah, so uh I went to work for Thomas Cook. Um, it was sort of a unique role. I originally was hired as what they call an on-site agent, which means I was not in the in the Thomas Cook office. I was dedicated to a particular client in their office, and that client was uh BP Alaska, British Petroleum. And it was an office set up in San Francisco to manage the uh development of the pipeline up in Alaska that BP was a partner of. So I had a terminal in their office. I was almost more I was always almost more a member of their corporation than I was of Thomas Cook. I booked flights mostly to Anchorage in London because all the um executives were expatriates from London who were stationed in San Francisco. And from that experience came the story in the book about um the dead dog who arrived in London.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

I don't know if we want to talk about dead dogs. Because you and I are both you and I are are both dog people, and we can we can talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 31:06

No, we're both dog people, and I and I and I and I put I put the uh I put I mean I put the story in there because it really has a happy ending.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

All right, all right. Let then let as long as it hasn't a happy ending, we can talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

They all all the stories have happy endings.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

So tell us a little bit about this story.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

This story was based uh uh on my personal experience with one of the executives who uh was being relocated back to London, and uh she had a pet dog, and I had to make arrangements for the dog to travel with her back to London. And that's that's the basic story, everything was fine. But my as I'm writing these stories, my w my mind started to wonder, well, what if? Uh so the story, which is fictional, is the same someone who works for the oil company going back to London, has a dog, and but the dog passed away of natural causes before she went back to London. So the dog is uh placed, you know, the body of the dog is placed in cargo and sent over there. For some reason, they uh the the the cargo handlers in in Heathrow didn't understand that he was already deceased. So when they they brought the dog out, they said, Oh my god, we killed it. And so we got to do something. So they very quickly, uh one of the cargo handlers said, I forgot, uh it was a let's say a cocker spaniel, I'm just guessing. And the book is specific, but uh they said, Oh, well, I have a friend who's trying to give up their cocker spaniel. It looks exactly like this one. I'll go get it, and we'll and we'll present it, we'll present it to the passenger. So the passenger comes over over to the cargo building to get her dog, and here's this happy little dog bouncing around, and she and she freaks out and she goes, Oh my god, that's not my dog. That's not my dog. My dog passed away. I should have the remains of my dog. So the cargo people realize I had made it kind of an era, but the happy ending is that the the cocker, the the the cocker spaniel that was welding alive found a new home with the woman.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Oh, nice. So let's talk about your your book because some of the stories are embellished, some of them are factual, and some of them, like this one, is based on uh a story, but you know, fictionalized. I think you say based on true stories. Right. So let's talk about your book. Why did you write this book? And there is a link in the episode description for people to purchase this book. And I think it's this great anthology of stories. I'm a storyteller, so I love to read other people's stories. So Al, take it away and tell us a little bit about your book.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

I wrote the book for probably the similar to the same reason that many other Pan Ammers have written their books about their experience. And that is to both preserve the history of the airline and also to preserve their personal memories for perpetuity. Uh what I thought of specifically was a little maybe a little weird. Many years ago, when I was going back to the Virgin Islands to visit family, I was visiting with my aunt, and out of the blue, she said, I've written a group of uh poems, you know, based upon my experience here in St. Thomas. And she worked for the local government, but she also worked as a shopkeeper for various gift shops. And she said, Would you like to hear them? And I said, I'd love to. So she pulls them out, and it's like a loose leaf notebook, and she starts reading, and one after the other is more interesting and more beautiful and more poignant and more heart-touching than the one before. And I thought to myself, God, these are great. I should get a copy of these and then and preserve them. Well, I never did, and they just disappeared. I don't know where they went. So I I so I thought to myself, you know, I've got stories and experiences and memories that I don't want to disappear. So that's how I that's kind of how I got into the point of writing the book. And and also because, you know, uh over time you keep telling the same stories again and again. But I wanted to write something that was number one, not long. As you know from reading, these stories are only about a page, page and a half. And so, you know, something you can do in short, short bursts. Also, I wanted to make it as entertaining as possible whilst still being factual. A lot of books about Pan Am, you know, the nonfictions are about the history, which is great. The others are about flight attendants and their experiences, which is important. But this is a little bit a combination of 80%, uh, 75% fact and 25% fiction. So the title of the book is Pan Am Stories, you can't make this up. I think, but even though some of the stories are slightly made up, they're all very possible. They all could have happened exactly as they're written.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Do you have a favorite or a couple favorites you can share with our listeners?

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Gosh, I have two uh uh that that I I've selected I could read. One is uh that displays uh part of the humor that came with working for Pan Am. And the other one is uh speaks more to the heartfelt humanity of Pan Am.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Yeah, if you want to share it with our listeners, and then you know, tell us a little bit uh more about what you mean by that.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Well, the first one is uh it's a little it's it's about I'd say humor. They're all humorous, I hope. There are some so-called serious stories, but when you work for Pan Am in a in a customer service environment, you really had to have a sense of humor. Uh both self-deprecating and and a sense of humor that that could help you manage customer service issues, but without being too frivolous. Uh because in, you know, in in in anyone who works for Pan Am knows that there was always in every level, there was always some customer who was very unhappy. You know, that was not going to be ameliorated easily. Uh so you really had a particularly on in on the in in flight service, you know, those flight attendants really uh were and are today the major diplomats of aviation. So that's that's kind of so this story I'll read you very quickly. Uh the title of it is called Only God Knows. December tends to be the foggiest month in London and runs havoc on flight operations at Heathrow Airport. With only two runways to both take off and landings, prolonged fog will cause innumerable flight delays and cancellations among all airlines. Pan Am was no exception, and the passengers were bored and frustrated on this cold and foggy day. Slamming a fist on the counter, the exasperated Pan Am passenger yelled to the passenger service agent, When is this goddamn fog going to clear? Looking up from his Panama console with the weary look of a parent whose child has now stepped on his last nerve, the agent replied, Sir, if I knew the onset, I most certainly would not be walking for an airline. I'd be the most best paid meteorologist in the United Kingdom. Shaking his head in disbelief, the passenger walked down the counter until he found a uniformed supervisor who had a telephone to his ear but was not speaking. Quote, Maybe you know what you're doing because no one else seems to spat the passenger. When is this damn fog gonna lift so I can get home to New York? Uh right, sir, replied the supervisor very politely as he placed his hand over the telephone mouthpiece. I presented that then a question to God, but he has me on hold. Why don't you have a drink over there at the bar and I'll notify you as soon as I hear? So that's that's kind of what you had to do.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

And you know what? Using humor in high stress situations usually works.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Yeah, it it always it always works as long as you're you know, as long as you're not disrespectful in your sense of humor.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

So t tell us a little bit more about your time with Pan Am. Any favorite trips that you went on?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

I'll tell you this. Uh the reason Pan Am is uh God trust us, even though I only worked there eight years, the reason Pan Am is such a strong part of my history, and I and I think this is true for anyone else who worked for Pan Am because there are flight attendants who worked only two years, there are people who worked 20 years, there are people who worked uh to the end and then and then uh continued with United or Delta after Pan Am closed. It really doesn't matter how short or how long your tenure was. Uh, I think everyone will say it was the best job they ever had. And the way I like to put it is that Pan Am was a combination of my best friend, favorite dog, and best love affair all rolled into one.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Let's talk a little bit about your dog and what you do at the San Francisco International Airport.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

So my dog Roman is a uh a larger 60-pound Australian shepherd. He's uh what they call red or liver color. He is very mellow, so he's very suitable for this kind of work. And he has to have his uh good canine certificate, which means that he passes a uh a test. And we're part of what's called a WAG Brigade, WHE Brigade SSFO Airport. It's um jointly sponsored by the airport and by the SBCA of San Francisco. And uh on a given day, we'll go to the airport. Uh he has a vest, I have a vest, uh, I have an ID, an employee ID that gets me past security. And uh sometimes we go to specific events organized by uh the airport, uh, but mostly we just uh kind of wander the terminals and let people stop and pen him. It's a you know it's meant for uh travel or comfort, but the I think the people who enjoy him the most and all the other dogs uh are the airport employees, uh the airline, the airline gate agents, the ticket agents, uh, and mostly the TSA uh staff because you know their job is fairly routine. So they they enjoy having a little respite. And even people who don't stop to pet him, his name is Roman. Even people who don't stop to pet him as we walk by each other, they they they always smile. They always smile at him. And and very often when people do stop and and pet him and talk to him, he's they say, Oh, I miss my dog, or I'm going home to my dog. And in one way or another, they always say, That this is great, I really needed this. It it it walking around and and uh you know letting people pet Roman doesn't seem like it's a very uh energetic activity, but by the time he and I get home, we're both wasted. Oh, interesting. So well, e even the dog. Yeah, it's it's because you're just you know, we're just really focusing on their uh on the traveler's attention. Sure. You know, on their needs, not our own.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Looking back on your eight years with Panam, is there any interesting stories that didn't make the book that you want to share with our listeners? Stories that stand out, maybe funny, maybe not funny.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

Uh there are two. One that's not funny and and kind of relative to what's going on today, and another what which I think is funny in a New York fashion. So the first one, given what's going on in Iran today and the military actions, uh, I was working for Pan Am in 1978 when the uh previous regime, the Shah of Iran, uh fell and was disposed. And you know, and there is a story kind of relative to that with Khomeini. But let me continue. So one of the things that I tell people that makes Pan Am unique is that historically, Pan Am was very often the first American airline into any country, and and and also the last airline out. So it was the last airline out of the Congo, out of Beirut, uh, it was the last American airline out of Vietnam that we know so well with the baby lift and and uh Al Topping story. And and Pan Am was probably the last American airline out of Tehran as they were evacuating Americans and diplomats and families who wanted to get home. So I'm in New York uh at the Pan Am building, and I get this phone call that comes in. Well, this man is screaming over the telephone. And all he can say is, Where are my dogs? Where are my DD dogs? Where are my dogs? I want my dogs. And I finally got him to calm down enough and I said, What dogs are we talking about? I just got off the flight from Tehran by way of Frankfurt. I went to the airport with my two dogs. They promised me they'd put them on the plane. I can't find them anywhere. And I said, Oh, uh, okay, hold on. If dogs are on the plane, I hope they are, they're not going to show up at the baggage compartment. They have to go through quarantine at the cargo cargo terminal. Get, you know, get a baggage agent to call them or take you over there and see if they're there. They promised me, they promised me, they promised me they'd put me out, they'd put them on the plane. Those dogs are the most important thing to me. They have to be on the plane. I said, Sir, I believe they are, you know, um, but do as I please do you know, do as I suggest. Get a hold of a baggage agent, tell them who that you know, sure, tell him where they are, and he'll he'll look into it. And that was that's all I could do. And I never We did find out if the if the dogs made that flight or not. And how about the the other story? The other story, uh I'm surprised this one didn't get into the book. I forgot all about it, but this is uh absolute true story. I'm I'm sitting you know at my terminal and I get a phone call and it's uh it's something like uh has Pan Am 842 from Tokyo arrived? I keyboard my you know go to the keyboard and I said uh well ma'am, it's uh it's 6.30 right now. The flight was scheduled to land at 625. I believe it has landed. Yeah, but has it actually landed? Ma'am, I I I believe I'm I I'm almost certain that it's landed. I want to know guaranteed is a plane on the ground or is it not? Ma'am, I'm in the Pan Am building. You know, about 15 miles away from Kennedy. I have no visual of the runway. I have every reason to believe it's it has landed safely. No, that's not satisfactory. I never I want to know is the plane on the ground? A typical New York conversation. So I at this time the uh the uh cleaning crew is you know coming by with their vacuum cleaners, uh, you know, vacuuming the carpets that stand between in a row between our terminal stations, and it's making a lot of noise. So as the as the uh cleaner with the vacuum cleaner comes by my station, I take the headset off, I put it down next to the vacuum cleaner. Ma'am, did you hear that? Yes, I did. It just landed. So she said, that's all I wanted to know. Thank you very much. So, you know, the passenger's always right. You just gotta the customer's always right. Just gotta give them what they want to know.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

So tell us some more stories uh that stand out to you in your time with Pan Am, or you know, dealing with Pan Am people all these years, I'm sure you have heard some very interesting stories from other people.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

Well, those are the stories that are in the book. Pan Am stories, you can't make this up. Um, I'll tell you, I'll give you a little differentiation between them. So the true stories are the one about Trinidad. Uh that was my very first call where the where this gentleman calls in and he says, I have to get the port of Spain because my grandmother is dying. Oh, I said, Oh, I can put you on a flight tomorrow. No, no, not tomorrow. Uh tomorrow is September 21st. I need a I need a flight on um December 21st, Christmas. So the flights are all sold out. I can put you on the wait list. No, no, no. You gotta give me a say my grandmother, my grandmother die. I say, well, I'm a little confused here. If she's dying, why are you waiting until December 21st? Well, I mean, grandmother, she'd die in, but she'd die in slow. So that's a true story. That was my that was my very first call. Um the stories about Bermuda are true, uh, about Dulles, uh, about the noise complaints at JFK, um, a couple of stories about Vietnam, which one of which I wrote. Um a lesser-known story, uh, a couple of stories told me by Dan Calusi, the former president of Pan Am when the Shah of Iran uh uh fell, and um Khomeini was scheduled to return from exile in Paris back to Tehran, his handlers uh wanted to charter a 740, uh, Pan Am 747. And Dan Calussi said, fine with us. Uh it's sitting in Frankfurt, it's not doing anything. They're gonna, you know, they're gonna pay a tremendous amount of money. But uh Chairman Sewell, uh William Sewell, uh, on the behest of the uh of Brzezinski, who was Carter's security uh advisor and national security advisor, said no, he didn't want to do it, didn't want it done. So it was really kind of ironic because on one hand, uh, you know, Pan Am was always kind of back in the World War II and other play times, Pan Am was under the pseudo-State Department for the State Department. You know, when when when the State Department didn't want to, you know, couldn't do things officially, they asked Pan Am to do it unofficially. Um they called the Pan Am when they needed them, but then when uh then when when Pan Am wanted to make a little money, the government says, oh no, it's uh you can't do that for security reasons. And as it turned out, uh they chartered an Air France uh 747, and there were about 30 American uh reporters, including uh Peter Jennings, on the plane. So it was sort of ludicrous. Yeah. So that's that's the story. Now the other stories which um the other stories which uh make are have a little more embellishment are those about Al Giro, Rod Stewart, the author, and some of the celebrities. Uh the fact that they flew on the flights is absolutely true. Uh whether or not Al Giroud actually sang to the first-class passengers could happen. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. So that's kind of some examples.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

So I have a story for you. Earlier in the episode, I shared the story of Felix the Cat and his round-the-world journeys and his connection to Pan Am. Well, Al, I don't think that's a coincidence because we've been talking about cats and dogs, but I have another Pan Am Cat story I want to share with you and our listeners. This one comes straight from the Pan Am Employee Newsletter of February 1991. And the headline reads, Fearless Flying Feline. So here's the story. Pan Am mechanic Gary Hickman was doing a routine maintenance check at JFK after a flight arrived from Houston when he heard something very unexpected. A faint, mournful meow coming from the landing gear. He looked closely and found a dirty, scared, and very cold cat tucked into the wheel well. Gary's first instinct, he got the cat some milk. Because of course he did. That's what Pan Am people do, right? Then he found out that the captain scheduled to fly that evening's return flight back to Houston was Paul Schultz, a cat lover and breeder. The universe was already working in that cat's favor. The cat had an ID tag with his name, Bobby, and a phone number. So Pan Am personnel made a call. On the other end was a woman named Elaine Nolan in Houston, who told them Bobby had run away from his home several days earlier, and that she had just started to accept the fact that he was probably gone for good. But somehow the cat got onto the tarmac at the airport and into the wheel well of this plane. Captain Schultz personally escorted Bobby on what the newsletter describes as, and I love this line, quote, a short but salmon-filled flight back to Houston. Upon landing, he returned Bobby directly to Elaine's arms, and the story got out. Pan Am and the Nolan family became local celebrities because once people heard the details, the story was hard to believe. Bobby had survived a 1,415-mile journey in the wheel well of a Boeing 727 at 31,000 feet in temperatures well below zero. In honor of Bobby's bravery, and I think you'll appreciate this, Captain Schultz returned to Houston Intercontinental Airport for a press conference, and he presented Bobby the cat with his very own Pan Am flight wings. That's Pan Am for me in one story. A mechanic who stopped everything to get a stray cat some milk, a captain who personally flew him back home. That was Pan Am. Good people that went the extra mile for their customers. So, Al, what do you think of that story?

SPEAKER_02 52:05

Well, I think it's very uh emblematic of Pan Am, uh, and as I said, uh the humanity of Pan Am, not just for people, but for for animals. Yeah, the the the the Pan Am, as you well know and have well documented in your podcast, was really a family of people, not just a collection of employees. Everyone would go out of their way to create the right outcome, sometimes according to the book, uh and very often not according to the book. But uh, whether if it was not according to the book, Pan Am management was usually very forgiving of it. And I I think those are the stories both involving people and animals that the public, the passengers recommend, uh remember and why they miss Pan Am. Airlines today, you know, all due respect, United, American, Delta, whoever. They all do they all do a good job in transporting people for the most part. And and they also there there are there are you know very meaningful stories from United and other airlines where people do go out of the way to help others. That's not the point. But for international travel, uh and for a big company as big as big as Pan Am was, as an employee, you really didn't feel that you're working for a big corporation. You know, even though it at its height it was 74,000 people around the world. You know, Pan Am was a place that you could walk, if you were traveling, if I was basically in San Francisco and I was traveling in Europe, Asia, South America, I could walk into any Pan Am ticket office and I'd be welcome as a family member. And vice versa, if they came to the United States. Some of my closest friends are, in fact, my my very closest friend, uh Paul Dickinson, is a uh a Pan Am employee I met uh in 1982, I think. Uh I was traveling, so I say I was traveling with my mother around the world, and he was traveling with his mother from London to Los Angeles to Australia, and we both happened to meet at the check-in desk in Los Angeles. The flight went from Los Angeles to Auckland to Sydney. My mom and I got up in Auckland. But back in the day, you know, when you were flying standby, uh, you were the best dressed passenger on the plane. Even even back then when people were still dressing relatively well, uh, you know, you you were always wearing a suit and tie or a coat and tie. So it was easy to recognize each other. So we struck up a friendship then, and we've been friends since 19 uh 82. He now he retired from United. He now lives in the in Spain. Um, but one of the stories on my book is uh about uh involves the two of us, like kind of like we invited, we invented the internet. And what happened was, and this is uh you know, another another another example of working for Pan Am and and being innovative. Essentially, as I said, Panamack was a computer system that was coded, but there was a particular line in the system called remarks. So five asterisk RMKS. And in that line, you could you could type whatever free text you wanted. So my friend Paul and I discovered that we could talk to each other like email or like texting long before those two things were even part of the vocabulary. Uh I would work uh a morning shift and he might work an afternoon or evening shift, so there was an eight or nine-hour time lag, but there was an overlap period where we're both on duty at the same time. Um now we knew enough not to create what they call a revenue record because you don't want to take a seat out of inventory, that'd be wrong. Uh so we created a standby record uh so that there's no inventory taken, it's just listing a standby employee. So I might create a record called bond slash James and for a stand a standby uh rating. And then in the remarks record, we would simply you know write to each other back and forth, just having a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 55:59

So, Al, why is Pan Am history important and why should it be preserved for future generations?

SPEAKER_02 56:08

Um, well, and this is part of a presentation I've I've been practicing and giving. I I gave this presentation to the local rotary club where I am now. The easiest way to explain Pan Am to people who don't know what it is, I said, you know, obviously Pan Am was in your line. Uh but Pan Am was to aviation, what NASA is to space. You know, it created everything about international aviation that we take for granted today. You know, there were as you know even better than I do, you know, the first ones to open routes, the Caribbean, South America, Asia, uh, and then Europe for a brief time. They were technic technically at the head of aviation in terms of the development of aircraft from the Sikorskis to the uh Boeings, strata cruisers, the first ones to introduce 747. So they were the they basically built international aviation from the ground up, and all the other countries, particularly after World War II, were kind of riding on their coattails. So that I think that's important for people to know. And then the other thing that I think is very important to for people to know and preserve is again the humanity of Panama. The fact that they, pilots and flight attendants, would on a volunteer basis go into uh places of danger and war and and earthquakes and all kinds of things and be the last airline out of those places. A friend of mine that worked with me in uh in New York was quoted in a Fortune magazine article about Pan Am, uh particularly when it was coming back from adverse economic times in the late 70s to sort of make money again in 78 and 79. And he said that if if you were traveling overseas and you knew that the end of the world was coming and you had and you you know you had to get back, Pan Am is the airline you would call to take you home. So yeah, that's that's a reputation, you know, not only as a brand, uh particularly as a brand, but as part of American history that I think is important to preserve.

SPEAKER_01 58:05

Very well put. Anything else you'd like to add to our time together?

SPEAKER_02 58:11

Yes, I would. And I want to um uh and that is that I I I know that this is one of the uh last uh podcasts that you are organizing, um and uh that you will be leaving this responsibility sometime in the summer. Uh so I want to thank you personally, Tom, for everything you've done to preserve the history, legacy, memories of Pan Am. Uh I think it's an incredibly important and a large part of what the Pan Am Museum is doing to preserve the legacy. These recordings, which are now probably up in the 40s or 50s now. No, we're past 60.

SPEAKER_01 58:50

Past 60 episodes.

unknown 58:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:53

Past 60 episodes. I mean, they're they are preserved at the Library of Congress and on podcasts, you know, for historians and students. Uh, you know, you've you you've you've generated numerous awards, thousands of downloads, thousands of uh of impressions. Uh you've generated a whole new uh a new generation of young people interested in this airline. Um you know the value of what you've done cannot be um overstated. Um so I appreciate that. No, it's true.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

It's certainly, yeah, it's certainly bittersweet.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

It is bittersweet. Uh but you know, every relationship you know comes and goes. Uh, but you're kind you know, as I say in the military, thank you, thank you for your service. I appreciate that. Uh you have yeah, you have done so much to preserve the the history and legacy of Pan Am, and not just preserving the history and legacy, but to make it a living point of interest for future people.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

So I want to leave. Well, I appreciate that very much. And like like I've said, you know, all good things must come to an end. And I think that this program, we have created a great library of oral histories, and I would love to see this uh at least my participation in it end on a high note. Um, and I think that's where we are, and and that's why I came to this difficult decision to end my participation. But uh I value uh all of our listeners, I value, you know, all of our guests, uh, and also, you know, I value our friendship, Al, because you were one of my early supporters uh when I was getting this put together. And in the beginning, I didn't even know what I was doing. So I it was kind of, you know, let's try it out, see what happens. So I I thank you very much for all your comments.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:39

Well, you're welcome. You you deserve all the compliments you you get. And I just want to add the fact that, yes, we have been friends for a number of years now, but I think that's kind of an extension of the Pan Am spirit. Uh, you know, as I say in my book, if you if you made a friend in at Pan Am, you basically made a friend for life.

unknown 1:00:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

And even though, and though, even though the airline uh closed its doors, you know, the friendship never those friendships never did. And uh you and I will be in touch uh for many, many years to come as you go about your next venture, and maybe I'll get on another venture, who knows? Uh I I I I I would just maybe close just by reminding people, uh, and you might do so in the footnotes, uh, the book, Pan Am Stories, you can't make this up. Um, we encourage I encourage people to buy the book through the Pan Am Bookstore. Uh what I do is that uh all the sales proceeds go back to the Pan Am Museum. So what I do is every once in a while I ship them a box of books uh free of charge, and uh they what whatever they sell them for is pure profit for them. So uh I would encourage people to buy buy the books through the bookstore. Uh otherwise it is available uh on Amazon or through your local bookstore.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:50

That's very generous of you, and I'm sure the Pan Am Museum people uh very much appreciate that. And there is a link in the episode description to purchase this book from the Pan Am Museum. And uh, like Al said, it's a great way to support the museum's mission of preserving Pan Am history for future generations. Al Gilbert, uh also known as Ace, Ace Gilbert, um, it's almost like Ace Ventura, but instead it's Ace Gilbert. Uh always a pleasure. Thank you for coming on the Pan Am podcast, and uh we will keep in touch.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:26

We will keep in touch, and to quote Pan Am in closing, Tom, thank you for making the going great. All right, thank you so much. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:39

Pan Am was a pioneer in air travel and still stands as one of the most iconic and innovative airlines in aviation history. That legacy lives on at the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York, where you can explore the rich history of the aircraft and individuals at the heart of the company known as the world's most experienced airline. For more information about the Pan Am Museum, check out our website at www.thepan Amuseum.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. As was once a tagline in one of our commercials, we would greatly appreciate your support to help the Pan Am Museum continue making the going great. You can also support the museum by shopping on our online store for all things Pan Am accessories, apparel, jewelry, books, models, and posters. We want to hear from you. If you have a question for us or want to share your story, our email address is podcast at the Pan Ammuseum.org. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan América.