My interest in airliner display models goes all the way back to 1964, when my first flight experiences aboard a Pan American Boeing 707 and a Pacific Northern Airlines (PNA – “the Alaska Flag Line”) Boeing 720 created a life-long fascination with the first generation jetliners. I was ten years old at the time, and paid a daily visit to the Pan Am and PNA ticket offices in downtown Juneau, Alaska, where I spent many hours admiring the very large scale 707 and 720 display models.
The priorities of career and family, as well as a competing passion for collectible automobiles and scale-model cars, delayed my entry into the airliner display model hobby. During the last fifteen years, however, the memory of the large ticket office models has inspired me to assemble a modest collection, and I hope to add a few additional models during the years ahead.
My collection began with the discovery of the 1/72-scale vintage propliner models from Atlantic Models, and my early acquisitions included the Pan American Stratocruiser, 307 Stratoliner, Constellation, DC-7C, B-314 Clipper, etc. Given financial constraints and my personal enthusiasm for the history and significance of Pan American World Airways, I opted to focus my collection on Pan Am. Further, remembering that part of what made those ticket office display models so impressive to me was their large size, I determined to limit my collection to models that are 1/72 or larger in scale.
Sadly, the readily-available first-generation jetliner models offered by Atlantic Models and others are no larger than 1/100-scale, and it was important to me to locate some significantly larger jetliner models.
During the late-1990’s, I stumbled across a 1/36-scale Pan American Douglas DC-8 model, hidden beneath a grand piano in a Seattle-area antique store. While slightly scraped and battered, the model was unbroken and retained all four of its jet engines. Here was a large-scale early jetliner model like I had always dreamed of. The model lacks a stand, and Fred Cox (with the large collection of DC-8 Douglas Factory Models) has advised me that the model was probably produced by Pacific Miniatures. It hangs today from the ceiling in my small home office:
A few years later, I successfully acquired my first large scale Pan Am 707 model from an Ebay seller in Vienna, Austria. This 1/60-scale model still carries the “Property of Pan American World Airways” label, as well as a Pacific Miniatures logo, and is surely the “crown jewel” in my small collection. I have the original stand, but have also suspended this model:
A number of years ago, I added a second large scale 707 model. This 1/50-scale 707 was produced by Westway Models, and had received some restoration work prior to my purchase. The Ebay seller was an Air France employee from Paris, and claimed that this model had been displayed in Pan American’s principal ticket office on the Champs d’Elysee in Paris. Once again, I have the stand, but it also fills the airspace above my work surface at home:
As I look ahead to the future of my model collection, my particular focus will be large-scale Pan Am 707's and DC-8's. I know that some large Pan Am Lockheed Constellation models were also built, and I would love to add one of those as well. I've seen no indications that large-scale Pan Am 727's, DC-10's, or L-1011-500's were ever produced, but these would hold great interest. A true, large-scale Pan Am 747 ticket office model would be a further, tremendous addition to the collection.
