Trippe managed to find one route where the cartel could not thwart him: New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Pan Am's one-way fare was $75, and the flights were packed. Finally, in 1952, Trippe's relentless attacks on the i.a.t.a. forced all airlines to accept the inevitability of tourist class. But by then his vision had taken off for its next destination. Flying the oceans was still mostly for the rich and famous. For millions of others, it was just a dream or a once-in-a-lifetime binge. Trippe saw that the jets being introduced by Boeing and Douglas could mark the end of that, and he ordered plenty of them. In October 1958, a Pan Am Boeing 707 left New York for its first scheduled flight to Paris.

The jet age had begun, and the transformation was dramatic. The 707 flew almost twice as fast, at 605 m.p.h., as the propeller-driven Stratocruiser it had replaced. The 707 carried about twice as many people. And for the first time, it flew mostly "over" the weather: typically at 32,000 ft., much higher than the Stratocruiser, a civilian version of the B-29 bomber.

But those were not the numbers that intrigued Trippe. While he brilliantly exploited the glamour of his first jet-set passengers--celebrities and vips--he was calculating the new jet-age math of what we call in our business "bums on seats"--the seat-mile cost.

The first 707s were flying with five-abreast seating, two on one side of the aisle, three on the other. Trippe switched to six abreast and cut fares, and the Pan Am jet clippers made flying "the pond" far more accessible. By 1965 the company was predicting that 35 million people would be flying international routes and that there would be a 200% increase by 1980.

The relentless Trippe had the big idea: he reasoned that mass air travel could come to the international routes only with a larger airplane--a much larger airplane. Trippe put the notion to his old friend Bill Allen, the boss of Boeing, saying he wanted a jet 21/2 times the size of the 707. It was a staggering request given the development cost of the 707. And Trippe didn't stop with size. Pam Am was operating the 707 with a seat-mile cost, at best, of 6.6c. Trippe set for Boeing the goal of reducing that 30%.