Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and more commonly known as Pan Am, was an airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial flag carrier of the United States for much of the 20th century. The first airline to fly worldwide, it pioneered innovations such as jumbo jets and computerized reservation systems and introduced the first American jetliner in 1958.

Founded in 1927 by two U.S. Army Air Corps majors, Pan Am began as a scheduled airmail and passenger service flying between Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba. In the 1930s, under the leadership of American entrepreneur Juan Trippe, the airline purchased a fleet of flying boats and focused its route network on Central and South America, gradually adding transatlantic and transpacific destinations.

Pan American World Airways also pioneered the first regular air service to Asia from the U.S., starting with airmail in 1935 and passenger service in 1936, using flying boats like the China Clipper to island-hop across the Pacific, creating essential infrastructure along the route to connect North America with the Philippines, Hong Kong, and beyond. This significant achievement established the first reliable air link over the vast Pacific Ocean, drastically cutting travel time from weeks by ship to days by air.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Pan Am began facing a series of challenges, both internal and external, along with rising competition from the deregulation of the airline industry in 1978. After several attempts at financial restructuring and rebranding throughout the 1980s, Pan Am gradually sold off its assets before declaring bankruptcy in 1991. Thereafter, the airline's name and imagery were purchased in 1998 by railroad holding company Guilford Transportation Industries, which changed its name to Pan Am Systems and adopted Pan Am's logo.

According to en.wikipedia.org