Did you know that there are people in the world who are totally obsessed with Pan Am? A 12-day commemorative trip celebrating the US airline’s legendary service and cultural icon status, Tracing the Transatlantic, will take place in June 2025 aboard a privately chartered, all-business class 757-200, but it doesn’t come cheap.
Inspired by Pan Am’s original Flying Boat routes in the 1930s, the trip – for just 50 Pan Am groupies willing to fork out at least US$60,000 (approximately £45,500) per person for the privilege – will start and finish in New York City, with stops in Bermuda, Lisbon, Marseille, London and Foynes in Ireland, staying in the best hotels and enjoying incredible experiences along the way.
It begins and ends with a night – and gala dinner – at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, which re-opens in December after a major refurbishment. Other hotels include Rosewood in Bermuda, The Savoy in London and Dromoland Castle in County Clare, all venues with a storied history. There will be an evening of fado in Lisbon and a dinner at the Flying Boat Museum in Foynes, which houses the world’s only full-scale Pan Am Flying Boat replica.
The concept was dreamt up by Bartelings, a Cyprus-based specialist in worldwide private aircraft touring headed up by Gary Bartelings. “The trip has been designed to be a wonderfully social experience as it would have been in Pan Am’s prime and because it’s a private charter, people can move around and mingle more, which creates a real sense of comradery you wouldn’t find on other flights,” says Bartelings. The company has teamed up with The Pan Am Museum Foundation in Long Island, set up by a group of ex-Pan Am flight attendants in 2015 and The Pan Am Brand (you wouldn’t believe how much merchandise is still being produced, they love it in South Korea).
“The people were always Pan Am’s secret sauce,” says Linda Freire, co-founder of the museum and a Pan Am flight attendant for 12 years. “You had to have a presence and appeal to work there. A lot of our passengers were frequent flyers and we’d see them multiple times per month and build up relationships. They grew to expect the highest level of service from us. Don’t worry, nothing’s too big to deal with, I’m a Pan Am flight attendant, I can handle it. That was our adage.”
Food was always integral to the Pan Am offering. They had a caviar bar, famously carved chateaubriand on the spot using great swashbuckling knives you’d never get near a plane today and in the 1950s had menus designed by the legendary Maxim’s of Paris. The team is currently studying original Pan Am menus for inspiration (“It won’t be exactly the same – things have moved on since 1991. Back then, they served Moët. Today, we probably want Dom Perignon.”).
“Pan Am always tried to emulate an ocean liner type of experience,” said a friend’s mother who flew with the airline on multiple occasions. “At one point in the 1970s, that famous spiral staircase led up to a candlelit dining room which was pretty fabulous. They served lobster, caviar and roast beef carved at the table and served on bone china. We all dressed up and the Pan Am stewardesses were glamorous too. Diction and manners and grooming were important back then.”
My own American grandfather had been a frequent Pan Am flyer all over the world in the 1940s and 50s when he worked in the advertising industry. He was even a member of their ‘by invitation only’ Clipper Club. He wrote a memoir (never published) with lots of detail about his travels.
“They served us a champagne breakfast on our flight to Honolulu, which must have been the earliest I’d ever had a drink,” he wrote of a Pan Am flight in the early 1950s. “But it meant everyone in the cabin promptly fell asleep until lunchtime. When I awoke, the stewardesses were coming round with steaming hot towels and they told us to bury our faces in them and it would revive us. That was a new trick to me but it worked and I still use it to this day.”
In true Pan Am style, the aircraft for next year’s adventure, which will avoid public air terminals and enjoy expedited customs and immigration at each port of call and is configured to carry a maximum of 50 passengers, will feature modern lie-flat seats with a ‘buddy’ arrangement, which means a friend from across the plane can join you at a little table, to play cards, drink champagne or both. It has been chartered from Icelandair and will be crewed by their pilots and flight attendants kitted out in full retro-style Pan Am uniforms.
Alas, if you are hoping to snag a ticket you are too late. Pan Am announced their comeback just a couple of weeks ago and the trip has already sold out. Organisers are in the throes of adding a second identical itinerary and there are plans in the works for others, including a centenary ‘around the world’ trip in 2027.
“Over all of my travelling life, I covered close to a million miles, mostly by air, with more than 150 transatlantic and transpacific crossings,” wrote Grandpa Tom. “But I still think the Pan Am stratocruiser was one of the most comfortable airplanes ever designed – a wide, roomy cabin with an open bar, lounge, big reclining chairs and footrests that felt like feather beds.”
For some, it seems, then and now, only Pan Am will do.
The 12-day Pan Am Tracing the Transatlantic trip, takes place from 27 June-9 July 2025, from $59,950 per person based on two sharing or $65,500 for an individual, including all flights and accommodation, most meals and beverages and an exclusive branded swag bag. criteriontravel.com
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