Awarded the prized Collier Trophy as the greatest modern achievement of American Aviation, the transpacific service of the Pan American Airways System is acknowledged throughout the world as the finest example of modern transportation. Manned by a corps of highly trained experts, equipped with the most advanced aids to modern flying, the ocean airway is a marvel of scientific transport operation. Over the nine-thousand mile course to China the great four-engined Clipper Ships ply back and forth with a fine precision that has been quick to win the confidence of the travel world. The Clipper Ships themselves - giant twenty-six ton, four thousand horse-power flying boats, designed to the exacting requirements of ocean service - they are the largest, finest transport craft on the airways of the world. Aloft, they are constantly watched over by the ceaseless guard of a hundred experts. Aboard is a crew of seven: a Captain, a veteran of years of air transport command, whose qualifications exceed those of the master of an ocean liner; a First Officer, who is junior only in years to the Captain; a Second Officer, who devotes his entire time to the exacting navigation of the ship; an Engineering Officer whose sole charge is the perfect functioning of the great power plant; a Radio Officer, who maintains constant contact with at least two guarding ground stations every moment of the flight and who manipulates the ship's own Direction Finder, taking cross-bearings at regular intervals on ships below and stations ashore to supplement the guarding bearings from the great ground control stations at the bases; a Junior Flight Officer - a First Officer-in-Training - who is capable of filling every post aboard the ship; and a Steward whose only concern is the comfort of his passengers. In this multiple crew, which Pan American first set up as an objective of its post-graduate training school seven years ago, all are expert seamen, at least four are pilots, two of whom are at the controls during every instant of the flight; four are graduate mariners, three are licensed radio operators; three are graduate flight engineers. All are products not only of years of flying under Pan American's rigid operating standards, but are veterans, as well, of from ten to twenty scheduled crossings of the Pacific route. Before each departure a weather map is prepared, from data gathered from more than one hundred and fifty stations, scattered over the Pacific area. Upon this map of known conditions is drawn the course map over which the Captain directs his ship. Every thirty minutes the ship's position is reported and this is checked and re-checked by at least two of Pan American's remarkable radio Direction-Finding stations at the terminals. Constant, scientific observation and research, the highest maintenance standards for aircraft, the highest qualifications for all personnel, and the rigid requirements of an operating policy based on ten years of unchalleged leadership in international air transport, are the assurances behind this world-famous air service...