PAN AMERICAN WORLD AIRWAYS

Influence Of Pan American World Airways On The International Airline Industry

Influence Of Pan American World Airways On The International Airline Industry

Introduction

On December 21, 1988, Pan American World Airways Flight 103 from London to New York exploded 31,000 ft. above the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. The crash provoked one of the longest criminal investigations in Scottish history, and led to an eight-year diplomatic game of cat and mouse in which the United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya.

Just after 7 P.M. that December night, the Boeing 747 crash-landed onto the little Scottish town, destroying 21 houses in Lockerbie. The youngest person killed in the explosion was just two months old, while the oldest was 82 years. All 259 passengers, hailing from 21 nations, and 11 people on the ground were killed; 189 of those killed were American citizens.

The bombing took place four months after an Iranian Airbus was shot down by the American military cruiser U.S.S. Vincennes. Iranian government officials and Middle East terrorist groups had issued threats of revenge in wake of the July 1988 Airbus disaster, in which 290 people were killed. U.S. officials originally suspected that Iran had paid the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command to carry out the bombing. The organization denied any involvement in the crime.

The Scottish investigation, which lasted three years, would later point to different culprits. Investigators sifted through 4 million pieces of wreckage, scattered throughout 845 square miles of countryside, and cataloged more than 15,000 items of personal effects. A one-pound Semtex bomb placed inside a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder was found to have caused the disaster. The bomb was inside a brown Samsonite suitcase in the plane's cargo hold. Investigators traced the owner of every piece of luggage on board the flight except for the brown suitcase.(Richard,2006, 74)

Computer records at the Frankfort airport in West Germany, where the flight originated, showed that the brown Samsonite suitcase traveled aboard Pan Am Flight 103 without an accompanying passenger. Investigators determined that the luggage had been transferred from an Air Malta flight that had recently arrived in Frankfort from Malta's Luqa Airport.

Factors That Influenced Pan American World Airways

Two important bases on which buyers evaluate Pan American World Airways are schedule and price. However, there are other secondary, but important, quality of service aspects that a consumer may consider in Pan American World Airways. Such aspects as safety, solace of the seats, in-flight amenities (e.g. nourishment and beverages), attitude of the ground and air journey crew, financial stability of the airline, on-time performance of the flights, assurance that bags arrive with the passengers, the seen prospect of being “bumped” from a air journey, and common flyer programmes may also be important qualities that leveraged Pan American World Airways over International airline industry.(John, 2007, 12)

A related area of interest is the study of the impact of process performance on customer dissatisfaction. It has been documented that the principal dimension customers use to referee a company's service is the ability to ...