I watched an old movie about the girls on PAA. Romanticized I'm sure but the movie wasn't all that far off. Those were the salad days and the girls were pursued by some pretty heavy hitters.
I hated to see Pan Am go. They were the aristocrats of airline travel. Pan Am opened up just as the guys from my old squadron were getting back from Vietnam. I went a different route because I initially wanted to go into flight test. Many of my old squadron mates ended up at Pan Am. After Pan Am folded it seemed most the former Pan Am guys of my vintage ended up at United. The squadron that they were in in Vietnam got shot up pretty bad so they had it rough for a number of years.
My last flight I had a jump seat rider who gave me his ID. I looked at it and said - I thought you were dead. The Squadron gets shot up and you disappear. What happened?- He said they transferred me to do secret missions flying into Cambodia. I said I thought that must have been exciting. He said exciting yes but we accomplished little. First we attached 2.7 rockets to the helicopter to shoot at the NVA and damned near shot ourselves down. Then we decided gun fire was safer so we would go roaring in with a gun blazing out of every door. Don't think we ever hit a darned thing, just entertained to poor NVA soldiers tired from marching from North Vietnam.