Sierra Hotel Blog
On April 28, 1937, a Pan American Boeing 314 Clipper completed the first commercial transpacific flight, arriving in Hong Kong from San Francisco. With private bunks, a dining room serving five-course meals on fine china, and white-coated stewards, the Clipper was the pinnacle of luxury air travel — until the war drafted the fleet into military service and newer, faster aircraft rendered it obsolete by 1951.
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On March 27, 1977, a KLM Boeing 747 took off without clearance and collided with a Pan Am 747 still on the runway at Tenerife. 583 people were killed in the deadliest accident in aviation history.
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Before he created Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry flew B-17 Flying Fortresses with the 394th Bomb Squadron in the Pacific, survived a crash on takeoff at Espiritu Santo, then flew for Pan Am — pulling survivors from a burning Clipper in the Syrian desert. The same man who gave us the USS Enterprise once flew real ones.
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