The Last Pan Am Flight out of Vietnam
In April 1975, Pan Am's Mission 1965/31 evacuated its Vietnamese employees and anybody else who could fit on board the airline's Boeing 747.
In April 1975, Pan Am's Mission 1965/31 evacuated its Vietnamese employees and anybody else who could fit on board the airline's Boeing 747.
DALLAS — Pan Am's Mission 1965/31 took place at Tan Son Nhat Airport (SGN) in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, six days before the fall of the city on April 30, 1975.
At the time, the situation in South Vietnam had become tense. The People's Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong had amassed on the outskirts of Saigon as they prepared for a final assault on the city.
The time came for a group of Pan Am Flight Crews to volunteer for mission 1965/31, which would be the last passenger flight out of South Vietnam.
By 1975, Pan Am had been making regular, regularly scheduled flights from Saigon for more than 20 years. However, as the communist forces advanced to the city after the fall of Da Nang in March, US Ambassador Graham Martin rebuffed repeated calls to evacuate the city. Also, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned all US passenger flights to and from Vietnam.
On the other hand, the FAA granted Pan Am special permission to operate its then-scheduled flight 842 to Saigon as a special charter. Named 1965/31, the flight was part of a subterfuge to avoid drawing attention.
As many heads of American corporations operating in Vietnam had already left, Pan Am's chief of operations in Vietnam and Cambodia, stationed in Saigon at the time, promised to evacuate the airline's personnel if the city fell.
Only a handful of people at Pan Am headquarters knew of the last flight out of SGN.
The chief of operations feared that if word leaked out, hordes of people might overrun the airport and the aircraft itself. Days before, dozens of Vietnamese trying to leave had been killed as they clasped on the wings of a Boeing 727 flying out of Da Nang.
The director of operations would plan the flight in the utmost secrecy. He would leave no one behind, as other airlines did.
As events unfolded, the situation in Saigon was dire. The purpose of the Pan Am flight on April 24, 1975, was no longer to evacuate the Vietnamese employees of the airline and their families, but also anybody else who could fit on board.
The airline deployed a Boeing 747-100 (Clipper Unity: N653PA, MSN 20348, LN 106) to serve the flight. The jetliner landed uncontrolled at SGN, parking way out on the tarmac. The flight and ground crews worked tirelessly to prepare the aircraft as soon as possible before it was too late.
The aircraft, fitted with 375 seats, began to cram people in the passenger cabin, and eventually on the floor, in the bathrooms, and anywhere else, so as to embark as many souls as possible. The atmosphere around the flight was tense, to say the least. The crews had to pat down the kids' diapers for possible hidden explosives planted by North Vietnamese forces.
The Cabin Crew also solicited funds by passing out pillowcases throughout the cabin. The money was used to purchase visas for those refugees on board, including children and infants.
"Saigon had not fallen yet, but they were moving. The front was moving south, and it was just going to be a matter of hours," recalls Pamela Borfeldt Taylor, one of the Flight Attendants who volunteered in Mission 1965/31.
Once the Flight Attendants were able to close the boarding door, the mechanic who flagged Clipper Unity to the runway jumped into the nose wheel well and climbed aboard through the cockpit floor.
The takeoff was not without difficulties. First, a fighter jet crashed on the runway, and the Jumbo jet had to wait five hours until the runway was cleared. As the Boeing 747 lifted off, North Vietnamese forces opened fire on the Clipper.
"You could see there was gunfire; at the end of the runway, they were firing at us," recalls Laura Lee Gillespie, another Mission 1965/31 Flight Attendant.
Amid the risks and the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the flight, Mission 1965/31 flew out of Saigon with 463 passengers on board. The jetliner proceeded to fly to Manila and then to Guam.
It would be the last Pan Am flight out of Vietnam.
Allan Topping
Topping lived and worked in South Vietnam for two and a half years. You can read the whole story in his book, Wings of Freedom.
In addition to its global network of scheduled services, Pan Am was also involved in many other rescue and humanitarian operations throughout the world.
These operations and missions included the Berlin Airlift, rescue operations from Tehran, operational support for US forces in WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War.
Article sources: US DOD, history.com, politico.com, airsoc.com, sanfranciscocbslocal.com, clippercrew.com, ocala.com, Pan Am Clipper, Volume 8, Number 5, pg. 7, 1982. Featured image: Pan American Boeing 747-100 Clipper Unity. Photo: Pan_Am_Boeing_747-121_Clipper_Unity_Marmet.jpg: Eduard Marmetderivative work: Altair78, CC BY-SA 3.0 GFDL 1.2, via Wikimedia Commons
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