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Robert Gandt

Skygods: The Fall of Pan Am Paperback – March 29, 2012

by Robert Gandt (Author)

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The Fall of Pan Am

Print length

350 pages
Language

English
Publication date

March 29, 2012
Dimensions

6 x 0.79 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0615611834
ISBN-13

978-0615611839
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Robert Gandt is a former Pan Am pilot who also happens to have the pen of a poet.
--Christian Science Monitor

Gandt peppers his recounting of the decline of Pan Am with anecdotes from former employees, mainly pilots. A fascinating commentary on aviation and American business; for public libraries.
--Library Journal

A veteran pilot's affectionate, anecdotal take on the slow death of Pan American World Airways, which, in the unsentimental language of the trade, went "Tango Uniform."
--Kirkus Reviews

From the Back Cover

It is 1966, and the world's most glamorous airline is at the apogee of its high-flying career. Pan Am has the greatest fleet of jets, the most international flights, and the fattest balance sheet of any airline in the world. Pan Am is headed for the stars.

And then something happens. In this compelling story, award-winning author Robert Gandt tells the inside story of Pan Am's meteoric rise and fall. You will fly with Pan Am's Skygods and Skygoddesses during the golden age of airline elegance. You meet the iconic players in the Pan Am saga--Juan Trippe, Charles Lindbergh, Igor Sikorsky, the Shah of Iran. You will experience the high drama of pioneering transocean flights, wartime exploits in the Pacific, Vietnam, the Middle East, and you will grieve when an act of terrorism sends the great airline to its death.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Black Star Productions (March 29, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 350 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0615611834
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0615611839
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.03 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.79 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #182,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #59 in Aviation History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
599 ratings

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Robert Gandt

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FLYING AND WRITING: These have been the dual passions of Robert Gandt's life. He published his first story at age sixteen - the same year he first soloed an airplane. As a U. S. Navy fighter/attack pilot he logged over 300 carrier landings and nearly 2,000 hours in the A-4 Skyhawk. In his deja vu work, BOGEYS AND BANDITS (Viking Penguin), he joins a Navy F/A-18 training squadron at the same base where he had trained years before.

As an international airline captain Gandt was domiciled in Berlin, Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, and Atlanta. His classic airline account, SKYGODS (Wm. Morrow & Co.), recounts the meteoric descent and crash of the world's most glamorous airline, Pan Am.

During the late 1980s and early '90s, Gandt flew with the famed Redhawk Aerobatic Team. In their Siai-Marchetti fighter-trainers (rescued from a military boneyard in the Congo), the Redhawks performed their formation aerobatic routine for over three million air show spectators.

Gandt's first book, SEASON OF STORMS, recounts the dramatic tale of the WWII battle for Hong Kong. His long association with Pan Am and its romantic history inspired CHINA CLIPPER (Naval Institute Press), which relives the mystique of the great commercial flying boats. His fascination with warbirds and the high-adrenalin world of unlimited air racing provided the background for FLY LOW FLY FAST (Viking Penguin), the inside account of the battle for the unlimited air racing championship at Reno, Nevada.

Gandt's first military adventure novel, WITH HOSTILE INTENT (Penguin Putnam) was followed by ACTS OF VENGEANCE, BLACK STAR, SHADOWS OF WAR, THE KILLING SKY, BLACK STAR RISING, and THE PRESIDENT'S PILOT.

In 1998 he made his screenwriting debut on the CBS series Pensacola: Wings Of Gold, adapted from BOGEYS AND BANDITS. Gandt served as writer and technical consultant for the twenty-two-episodes of the show, starring James Brolin as the commander of a Marine F/A-18 training squadron.

Gandt's historical work INTREPID, co-authored by Bill White, with a foreword by fellow naval aviator Senator John McCain, was published by Random House in the autumn of 2008 and was the winner of the Admiral Farragut Book Award. His follow-on book, THE TWILIGHT WARRIORS, the saga of the sea and air battle for Okinawa (Random House) won the prestigious Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature. In October 2017, ANGELS IN THE SKY, the saga of the volunteer airmen who fought for Israel in 1948, was released by W.W. Norton and rocketed to best-seller status on Amazon.

Gandt and his wife, Anne, live and fly at the Spruce Creek Fly-In in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Info at www.Gandt.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gandt

Customer reviews

5 star		73%
4 star		19%
3 star		5%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Gerald R Sheppard

Airplane heads and Accidentals

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 2, 2022

Verified Purchase

As a victim of similar fate being a Eastern Air Lines pilot of the same vintage of the “New Hires” I can relate. I knew the story, I was close to it, I roomed with Marty in a commuter pad in Valley Stream Long Island. I heard it said about Marty that he was a master in the art of survival, if Pan Am went down to four employees, he’d be one on the.. so I had a lot of PanAm friends. This is a very readable book, Gandt is a creative writer, a real wordsmith. A good read to those without inside knowledge.

Helpful

Boerseun

I could hear Juan Tripe, and I could smell the fuel, this book took me into PAN AM

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 27, 2022

Verified Purchase

The author presented this sad history wonderfully. I could have become a bogged down convoluted subject of who did what, instead he brought you into the cockpit, the passenger terminals and the board meetings. For that moment, being transported into the PAN AM world was a wonderful way to read the reported history, understand the Skygod ego's and even at times root for them. Really a treasure, thank you so much.

Helpful

michaelbebad

Not Just A Story of an Airline, But of Human Nature - A Cautionary Tale

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 28, 2012

Verified Purchase

I didn't realize the Author was a 26 year Pan Am veteran until after I finished the book. He definitely did not over-romanticize the corporation. It seems to be told in an objective manner. Hat's off to the author for writing it in this way.

This book offers much more insight than just a look at an airline. It offers insight into crowd psychology. Like how the majority of Pan Am employees reacted to company circumstances and how those emotions could reach a fever pitch - even though what they (the employees) were promoting was dead wrong (e.g. Acker Backers).

It offers insight into the classic Labor / Management conflict. Although nothing new here, it is interesting to see how the dynamic played out in one of the world's largest mega-corporations.

It offers insight into the dynamic between a board of directors and the management of a corporation (I'm sure most corporations don't act in this manner, if they did America would not have an economy). Not only does the Author not romanticize Pan Am, he makes it look like the management, including the original President Juan Trippe and all the directors, made a hell of a lot of very bad decisions. It almost reads like The Emperor's New Clothes when it comes to the Board of Directors and their dealings with their choices for leadership. These Presidents and CEOs were losing hundreds of millions of dollars and no one could even say where the money was going, THEY WEREN'T PRACTICING BASIC ACCOUNTING PROCEDURES (according to the book), yet the Board seemed helpless to do anything. It really looks like a joke in that respect.

The story of Pan Am management's decisions is mind-boggling. Talk about an epic failure. If one takes the accounts of this book as factual, one will walk away after reading it with no doubt that the reason Pan Am is not with us today is due to one reason and one reason only: inept management. Yes, there were bad circumstances that were out of Pan Am's control as well (recessions, other things I won't spoil), but solid management would have brought them through the stormy times.

It's a sad read, sad to see what could today be an American Icon, one of the world's top airlines if some different decisions had been made-but alas there's hindsight with the 20/20. It's sad to see what looked like a beast that was getting cut up, a little bit at a time, until it had nothing left to give. As the author says in one point near the end, "it was like a dog that chewed three of its legs off to escape but was still stuck in the cage."

I see a lot of the reviewers here suggest the book to other people who are related to aviation. I'd also say it's a great read for students of business or executives as a cautionary tale of what not to do to succeed.

4 stars just for the fact that it's awesome that we've got this story in print. It's very cool to see the inner-workings of this iconic corporation.

I deducted 1 star due to some editing issues (misspelled words, typos (maybe a bad port to the kindle, but errors nonetheless)) and due to a tad bit of repetitiveness and some long-windedness. Very minor issues

Overall though in my opinion this is a very well written book, very easy to read and peppered with a few 3 dollar words (like "avuncular" I love the Kindle's built in dictionary).

Helpful

Depressing to read. And yet so much worse for those Pan Am employees.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

A book in three parts: [1] The birth and rise of Pan Am, [2] Pan Am in trouble [3] the fall and death of Pan Am.

The first part covered the brinksmanship-like deal-making of Pan Am founder Juan Trippe and the huge influence Pan Am had on the initial development of both the Boeing 707 and the Boeing 747. Interesting to me. And uplifting. Perhaps author Robert Gandt should have expanded this section and titled the book “Skygods: The rise and fall of Pan Am” instead. But he didn’t.

The other two sections detail the Pan Am slow-motion train-wreck. Economic downturns, political favoritism, Mid East oil prices, terrorism and the two military operations Desert Shield & Desert Storm all contribute to the troubles of Pan Am (and many other airlines). There is a lot of focus on Pan Am’s top leadership since their responses to these troubles (and how they raised capital to weather the tough times) would determine whether Pan Am could survive the troubles or not.

There is also a lot of focus on the pilots. They are the Pan Am elite – especially the haughty senior pilots (the Skygods), who typically are guaranteed a job while the junior pilots may face the prospect of indefinitely-long furlough. Indeed, the airline pilot’s inflexible seniority system permeates their lives. And the complexities of two merging airlines trying to merge their two sets of pilots into a single seniority system caused hard feelings (and possible unemployment) for many pilots.

Bottom line: The majority of the book is about the slow disintegration of Pan Am. Informative but depressing.

7 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Matt Chambers

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 25, 2018

Verified Purchase

The way to think of this book is not so much a history of Pan Am more of a long account of the decline. The early sea plane years are covered a little quickly but that is not the main remit. I had long wanted to read more about why this great airline failed and this book is perfect for that.

It has a well written and interesting narrative, it is easy to read and not too technical which is perfect for a more casual reader. It is written in parts from the perspective of the pilot hence the title.

I would highly recommend it if you just accept that it is not quite a straightforward history of Pan Am.

One person found this helpful

jct80

A no-nonsense, novel-like account of Pan Am's 25 year decline.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 15, 2017

Verified Purchase

Gandt's no-nonsense, novel-like approach to chronicling Pan Am's rise and catastrophic fall is put to good use here. Following the careers of individual Pan Am fresh hires from the 60's, this book also retains a human touch, with plenty of humour, mischief and sadness (in the case of Lockerbie) mixing in with the corporate tale of woe. The characters in charge of Pan Am are also documented well: Juan Trippe: the pioneering, charming master manipulator, Harold Gray: whose declining medical condition appeared to be an eerie omen for Pan Am's own future of terminal decline, Najeeb Halaby: forced out from the airline he loved, General Seawell: an autocrat by every measure whose gamble of buying National Airlines proved disastrous, Ed Acker: the gung-ho executive whose reign as CEO also proved disappointing as he began selling profitable assets for the company to survive, and finally Tom Plaskett: an apparently nice guy put in charge of nursing a dying patient in its final few years. Throughout, the story is peppered with 'what-ifs': what if Pan Am had been allowed to fly domestic routes from the get-go? What if it had been allowed to merge with TWA, or finally, Northwest? What if the Shah of Iran, of all people, had bought the airline, and what would've happened to America's flag carrier after the Iranian Revolution? The story becomes a sort of epic tragedy, as every time the airline appears to be recovering, uncontrollable events kick it in the gut. The early 70's recession, the 1973 oil crisis, the tragic Lockerbie bombing, and finally, the Gulf War. A good, gripping concise book detailing why the airline that helped launch the jumbo age is no longer with us.

2 people found this helpful

John Frazer

Great Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 30, 2018

Verified Purchase

In the 80's I use to fly around the USA on Pan-Am conducting business, so have many flight memories, including getting the helicopter shuttle off the headquarters building roof in NY. Reading this book really surprised me to just how influential Pan-Am was to the aviation industry and I found it both absorbing and interesting, so thanks to the author for a great read.

One person found this helpful

katie john

A gripping tale of an iconic airline

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 27, 2014

Verified Purchase

As a British reader I knew little about the history of Pan Am. This brilliantly written book carried me along from the thrilling early days of the airline and the heady heights of the 1960s to the sad demise of this aviation colossus, including a heart-wrenching account of the Lockerbie bombing. However, as one other reviewer has mentioned, I have one caveat. I am giving 5 stars for the author's work - but I feel he has been very poorly served by his publishers. Not only is the text sprinkled with typos, "l's" instead of 1s, odd spacing etc, but the photographs are poorly reproduced and the jacket design would be much better without that wobbly cut-out of the Pan Am logo. (I work as a book editor so I could not help noticing these things.) I think this amazing, tautly written account needs much better presentation.

2 people found this helpful

Diddy

An excellent easy to read book which details through various stories ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

An excellent easy to read book which details through various stories the last thirty or so years of the famous Pan American Airlines, from their mid 1960's heyday to the final flight in December 1991. As a bit of an airline geek I knew a little about this airline but this book threw up quite a few surprises which I won't spoil for you, suffice to say a mixture of bad luck and bad decisions by the Pan Am directors resulted in the failure of the airline. Recommended easy read.

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