I was hired in August, 1988 following the interview process in MIA at PanAm. At that time they had asked me if I would fly their Express aircraft as the flow through agreement was signed, and the original 143 Ransome pilots were to go over to PanAm at the rate of three per month.

The fleet at that time was comprised of Dash 7 aircraft based in PVD, and PNE. ATR 42's were based at Berlin Tiegel airport, an operation that for several reasons was closed, and those aircraft moved to PNE as well. A BAE-3100 operation was also started out of MIA. We later added a couple of ex-RIO Airways, and RMA Dash 7's to the fleet.

Pioneering we did with greats such as Drew Bedson and others in the training department. We had the first Rnav approaches, STOL approaches with LAHSO operations, and later Cat II operations in the Dash 7, which sometimes was the only way out of a gate hold for BOS. We also had the first two Universal Lorans with our very own published approaches.

Times were good and in nine months I was sitting in the left seat, that's how quickly things were moving. PanAm Express had their own version of the "B" scale, where the Ransome guys were making $48,000, I came in at $37,000, ludicrous by today's standards.

By December, 1991 PanAm was selling everything including Express to TWA and on December 4 found ourselves at the TWA ramp in JFK, you know the one with that 70's looking terminal, and the famous "Fallopian Tube" that they re-carpeted for the movie "Catch Me If you can" that connects the two terminals. Delta wanted nothing to do with the operation, they wanted the A-310 North Atlantic operation for the routes, and quickly dumped the busses to some country that can't speak no good english. The pilots that did score were those on the 310, instant Delta seniority number!

The TWA operation was weird, I mean what a bunch of hayseeds these people were, and their res system and software was horrible, we were even writing tare sheets manually at most of the stations as these people did nothing to help you.

When they closed PVD they opened up DCA, no biggy to commute to DCA from BOS. When they closed DCA I bailed, the operation short lived after that as there was NFW I was going to PNE.