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As an airline pilot and airline hobby-historian I laughed out-loud during the first episode of Pan Am.
1. The captain is 30 years too young. PAA captains on the new 707s flying the NYC-Paris run in 1963 were not 25! They were 55! The First Officers were not 22, they were 42.
2. Where's all the smoke? No one smokes! Where's the fog of second-hand smoke on the flight deck--I mean COCKpit. There were ashtrays at all crew positions in the cockpit on 707s (I flew the KC-135R in the USAF and it had ashtrays) and the pilots had halitosis and smoker's hack (cough) and their skin looked like John Boehner's.
3. Not enough sexual harassment on the TV show. Male passengers grabbed ass constantly. The pilots, often married, grabbed and slapped a lot of stew asses back then. Yeah, some of the girls liked it but many did not.
4. The crew stays together trip after trip? Same crew all season long? NOT. I have three-leg days and often get a different crew on all three legs. Granted, the Pan Am flight schedule was different than my current west coast type of trip but no way the stews and pilots stayed together more than a trip at a time.
5. Hair. That captain has too much hair. Taper the back and sides son, you goddam hippie.
6. In the first episode, on takeoff roll, the pilots look at each other at about 120 knots and gay-ly smile. BWA-HA-HA-HA!!! Even my wife cracked-up at that one.
7. Inaugural revenue flight of new 707 in the first episode. The senior management or training captains come out of their caves to fly those trips. If there's any kind of glamour or excitement to the first revenue flight of a new jet then the senior guys come out to fly it. If there are local TV news cameras in the boarding area for a special type of flight then the glamour boys displace the regular pilots and step in front of the cameras.
8. Stews as Cold War spies? Uh, okay. Maybe that happened but I doubt it. Stews probably slept with Russian spies (and German spies and British spies and American spies and Italian spies and Japanese spies and Mongolian spies and everyone else) but that stew-as-spy angle seems a bit of a stretch.
Having crabbed about it, it's still kinda' fun to watch the show and at least have a good laugh at some of it. Obviously "Pan Am" is a HEAVY dose of revisionist history, just as the very good "Mad Men" series is, but as escapism TV it's fun so far.
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