Crew of the new Pan Am as they appear in the pilot show.
25 MAY: One of the great airlines of last century is about to take to the air again - but only on TV.
America’s ABC TV network has produced a pilot for a series which will reflect the glory days of Pan Am, or Pan American World Airways as it was originally known.
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The new show, called 'Pan Am', is set in the 1960s, when stewardesses were all gorgeous and girdled, pilots were handsome and heroic, and passengers dressed as though they were going to a ball.
The show was unveiled to critics yesterday as US TV networks announced their new line-ups for the coming autumn/winter season.
Calling it a sexy soap opera, one critic had this to say of the characters: "Maggie, we will learn, is leading a double life. When not all dolled up on her flights, she is living as a bohemian beatnik in New York’s Greenwich Village. Kate is secretly an undercover CIA agent. Her gorgeous sister, Laura, is new to the stewardess world, having just ditched her fiancé at the altar".
The real Pan Am was founded in the 1920s and along with TWA became an icon in international aviation.
But it fell upon hard times in the 1980s and the Lockerbie bombing of 1988, when a Pan Am jet en route from London to New York was blown up over the Scottish village, accelerated its demise.
The airline collapsed three years later.
It’s not known at this stage whether Australian TV networks will buy the show.
