Pan American Survey Flights

I have the 5 volume set of the AAMC Catalogs, but have not found anything that deals
with the Survey Flights that Pan American conducted.

Anyone know a source of data on the Dates, Crew and Routes covered by these Flights ?

Thank you

That s a different book. The AAMC Catalog doesn't cover such flights unless a first official or quasi-official plane trip with US mail.

That said Google is your friend.

Edit: Also the APS's APRL (library).

To get started, read the books by Jon E, Krupnick.

One is

Pan American's Pacific Pioneers: A Pictorial History of Pan Am's Pacific First Flights 1935-1946.

It is in the style of a coffee-table book, but it is loaded with great information.

I have both the Pacific Pioneers book and the Final Flight book. Wonderful job on both, but I was hoping to find a listing on Survey Flights much like the FAM/CAM listings.
It would help me ID a few covers I have that pre-date the commercial flights.

Have you tried the University of Miami Digital Pan-Am archives? The survey flight info is in there but it takes some work to extract it.

Please show your covers, w1ksz.

I found this in Kelleher Auction#2008, Lot 3001.
The video illustrates a number of covers from these flights.



https://kelleherstampassets.s3.us-e...8/898369.mp4

MikeL

For the record the AAMC Catalog does cover the Pan-Am survey flights in question by the OP. At least my 5th Edition, Vol 4, does. These are covered in the first section of Vol 4: Trans-Oceanic Record Flights.

Not sure how many survey flights there were, but in my ebay past I've sold four covers dated April 22, 1935 and October 5th, 10th and 16th, 1935. If you go to the Chronological Index of the AAMC Catalog (Vol 4) you will find these dates and references to the page numbers where info on the covers are dealt with.

The Kelleher auction lot shown above has nothing to do with the Pan-Am survey flights.

I'd like to see scans of the OP's covers dealing with these survey flights.

I've included a scan, front and back, of the first cover I sold on ebay (11/23/16):

I do have a cover for the Hawaii to California leg of the Survey Flight, bought off e-Bay a few years ago.

On a side note, I just got a Survey cover off that same place, for the Survey Flight of New Zealand to the US,
autographed by the Pilot, Capt. Edwin Musick.

I need to figure out how to attach jpg files to my replies so I can show them here.

A quick '"how to":

Scroll down to and click "Reply to topic" ( above the Quick Reply red bar), once there, below the blank reply box there are four links, all dealing with image uploads. Must be easy to do, I figured it out.

If you click "Quick Reply", you'll get different options.

Thank for the tip, I'll try to post some pix of covers.

That 5 volume set of the American Airmail Catalogue you mention was the Fifth Edition and was written/issued one volume at a time between 1974 and 1981. Since them, the American Airmail Society published the three volume Sixth Edition and then in 2014 began the Seventh Edition with Volume One, then two, three and four, and is planning to publish Volume five hopefully releasing it at the 2026 World Boston Stamp Show at the end of May (fingers crossed). This newest Volume will have as one of its main sections a newly revised and updated "Trans-Oceanic Record Flights" chapter where Pan Am's survey flights around the world, along with the many other one-time Trans-Oceanic Record flights by militaries and other airlines. This newest Volume of the Seventh Edition will have photos of actual examples of most all of the covers along with explanatory information on the flights and up to date values. Collecting Trans=Oceanic Record flights is an especially exciting area of first flight collecting as they tend to be high profile and high risk flights that pioneered the regular first flights that came in the following years. Most T.O.s as they are commonly called are also relative rare. As such T.O. collecting can get a little pricey and with some exceptions most are not easy to find. In some ways T.O. collecting is a bit like zeppelin collecting in terms of needing a hefty wallet and lots of patience and perseverence once you pick up the handful of common ones.
And Chevelle is correct in that those 1946 Pan Am Test flight covers you see frequently are NOT actually survey or other pioneering test flights. These were a big publicity stunt by Pan Am in cahoots with the US Post Office scratching each other's backs. Effective November 1, 1946 the Post Office reduced the international airmail postage cost to anywhere in the Western Hemisphere to 10 cents per half ounce. Pan Am came up with a publicity stunt where they advertised in newspapers across the US that citizens were intived to give it a try by mailing covers from their home cities to any and all of the 27 Western Hemisphere countries then served by Pan Am who had the mail contracts with the US Post Office to fly the mail to them. Pan Am arranged for their offices in those countries get get a bunch of clerks who would receive these covers, put a local airmail stamp on them, and return them to the senders. The claim was that Pan Am could fly the mail to these countries and back in just a few days thus encouraging the public to send their mail to these countries by airmail while saving time and money. You can find these covers from a large number of different American cities and towns. They are not listed in the American Air Mail Catalogues as they are not first or pioneering flights.