{"product_id":"vintage-1950s-1970s-howard-hughes-twa-debenture-and-juan-trippe-pan-am-stock-certificate-airline-rivals-set-of-2","title":"Vintage 1950s-1970s Howard Hughes TWA Debenture and Juan Trippe Pan Am Stock Certificate ✈️ Airline Rivals Set of 2","description":"\u003ch2\u003e✈️ Who Really Owned the Sky, Howard Hughes or Juan Trippe? A Vintage TWA Debenture and Pan Am Stock Certificate, Together\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e TWA debenture 13 1\/2\" x 9 1\/2\", Pan Am certificate 12\" x 8\" ~ Both really issued and cancelled, with the punch holes of real use.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor a lot of us, Pan Am was the airline. Unless your family flew TWA, and then it wasn't. I put these two pieces of paper together because they hang the whole fight on one wall: a Trans World Airlines $1,000 debenture from 1961, the very year Howard Hughes's grip on his airline came loose, and a rose-red 100-share Pan American World Airways certificate from the airline Juan Trippe ran for more than four decades. Two men, two airlines, one ocean, and a globe engraved on both pieces of paper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🌎 Trippe Got There First\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePan American Airways started on March 14, 1927 with three Army Air Corps officers, Henry \"Hap\" Arnold, Carl Spaatz and John Jouett, worried about a German-owned airline flying out of Colombia. It started out flying the mail. Control passed early to Juan Terry Trippe, a young former Navy aviator with a mail contract between Key West and Havana, and from there he built the flag carrier of American aviation in everything but name. Charles Lindbergh scouted routes as technical adviser. The China Clipper carried the first transpacific airmail in November 1935, passengers went from San Francisco to Manila in 1936, and in 1939 the Boeing 314 Yankee Clipper opened scheduled flying-boat service across the Atlantic by way of Lisbon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🛫 Hughes Came Over the Top\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTWA came up the other way. It started in 1930 as Transcontinental \u0026amp; Western Air, out of the government-brokered Spoils Conference that carved up the country's air routes, and it came out of that as one of America's Big Four domestic carriers, alongside American, United and Eastern. Its first coast-to-coast service left on October 25, 1930 in Ford Trimotors, New York to Los Angeles by way of St. Louis and Kansas City, with an overnight stop in Kansas City. Hughes became the biggest stockholder in 1939 and ran the airline from the late 1930s into 1960.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen came February 1946, and this is the part that makes these two belong in one frame. TWA opened New York to Paris and broke Pan Am's hold as the only American airline flying overseas. Trippe's ocean wasn't Trippe's alone anymore. Under Hughes the triple-tailed Lockheed Constellations and Super Constellations carried the red twin-globe across the Atlantic and on to Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and Pan Am went on to the first round-the-world service in 1947.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere's one I love. In 1950 both airlines changed their names to get the whole world in there. Transcontinental \u0026amp; Western became Trans World Airlines, and Pan American Airways became Pan American World Airways, the name engraved across this certificate. Same year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e💸 The Jets That Cost Hughes His Airline\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth men wanted jets. Pan Am's Boeing 707 brought America into the jet age in 1958. Hughes owned about 78 percent of TWA and wanted jets every bit as badly, and the trouble was paying for them. In the 1960-61 refinancing, the lenders put up $165 million in loans for TWA's first jets, and in return Hughes had to put his stock into a voting trust the lenders controlled.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat's this debenture. It's part of a $100,000,000 issue of 6 1\/2% Subordinated Income Debentures due June 1, 1978, under an indenture dated June 1, 1961. Hughes Tool Company agreed to buy whatever the public didn't, and the subscription offering closed on June 8, 1961, the date printed right on it. An income debenture paid interest only to the extent the airline had the income to cover it, which tells you how things stood. Hughes fought the airline in court for years, and in 1966 he was finally forced to sell his TWA shares outright, for $546,549,771.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow look at what Trippe was doing that same year. In 1966 he put in the $525 million order that made Pan Am the launch customer for the Boeing 747. One man cashed out and the other doubled down. Trippe retired in 1968.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🖋️ Read the Two Pieces of Paper\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTWA went to the De La Rue Banknote Company, about the most famous name in money printing, with roots in the shop Thomas De La Rue set up in London after coming over from Guernsey in 1821. It's engraved in dark green with a draped woman sitting on the clouds, her hand on the globe, and the seal reads TRANS WORLD AIRLINES INC., CORPORATE SEAL, 1934, DELAWARE. The First National City Bank of New York, later Citibank, was the trustee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePan Am went to the American Bank Note Company, and that rose-red border holds a bald eagle with an olive branch spread over twin globes, the Americas on one and Africa and Eurasia on the other, \"World Airways\" drawn as a picture. A seated classical figure sits at either side, one with a torch and the other with Mercury's winged caduceus. The seal reads 1927, NEW YORK, the year the airline was founded. Both companies reached for the globe. Neither one was being modest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🏙️ Two Monuments, a Year Apart\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEven the buildings line up. In 1962 Eero Saarinen's swooping TWA Flight Center opened at New York's Idlewild, now JFK. In 1963 the Pan Am Building rose over Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan. Saarinen's terminal lives on today as the TWA Hotel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🕯️ How It Ended\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 1973 oil shock and airline deregulation in 1978 squeezed Pan Am through the 1970s and 1980s, and old-timers in the collecting world like to point out the irony that this TWA debenture came due in 1978, the same year deregulation changed the business for good. Pan Am lost Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, and on December 4, 1991 it stopped flying. When it folded, its trademark was said to be the second-most recognized in the world. TWA went on ten more years, through Carl Icahn's buyout in 1988, two bankruptcies in the 1990s and the loss of Flight 800 off Long Island in July 1996, and went into American Airlines in 2001, after 71 years. Old-timers who flew TWA still talk about boarding a Connie or a 707 under that red tail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🖼️ About These Two\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy pictures seriously don't do them justice. They're printed on heavy paper, a lot like a dollar bill but stiffer. Each piece is drawn from my stack, and every one was really issued, so numbers, owners, signatures and stamps change from one sheet to the next and my photos show the type. The Pan Am sheets run from the 1950s into the 1970s, and the TWA debenture is dated 1961. Frame them side by side for a pilot, a flight attendant, an aviation office, or anybody whose family picked a side. There is no new press run coming. When the last of these are hanging in collections and galleries, they will be very hard to track down for sale.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Curated Gift Sets","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":68147886915816,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/hero_be5268e2-cff0-43d7-8951-9f1343787848.jpg?v=1794166112","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1950s-1970s-howard-hughes-twa-debenture-and-juan-trippe-pan-am-stock-certificate-airline-rivals-set-of-2","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}