Why Pan Am never really stopped flying

A restaurant inside an aeroplane? Big deal? This one is because it recreates the Pan Am ambience of the past. Nostalgia apart, the food is good and there is a waiting list.

“Sold out through July! Remaining 2017 tickets will be released by email on May 10th. Subscribe now. That is the message you get if you log on to the website panamexperience.com.”

Pan Am is dead, long live Pan Am. The now defunct but still iconic brand of the 1970s is grounded but is flying high thanks to the efforts of Talaat Captan, the founder of Air Hollywood, an aviation themed movie studio in Los Angeles.

Inside a warehouse in Captan’s studio sits the fully reconstructed forward section of a Pan American 747 wide-bodied jet. Functioning as a movie prop on weekdays, the 747 becomes the home of fine dining in the sky, the Pan Am way on Saturdays. And it is called the Pan Am Experience.

Captan’s comrade-in-arms in this venture is Anthony Toth, a serious aviation enthusiast who had been scavenging and collecting bits and pieces of Pan American Airways’ old aircraft. Now 26 years after its last flight, Toth and Captan have given Pan Am aficionados something to smile about.

At $300 a head, the customer gets a six-course meal, caviar and vodka, flight attendants in short skirts – everything that Pan Am laid out at its peak before it came down with a thud. The guests receive the authentic Pan Am treatment - from the pampering to the cutlery and crockery to the food to the glamorous flight attendants in Pan Am uniforms.

Its success (John Travolta has had his birthday celebrations twice there) has had Captan thinking of building another Pan Am Experience in Las Vegas. The proof of the pudding is that Captan has not advertised the Pan Am experience even once. And it has been sold out till July. Based on that, a smooth landing in Vegas may not be that difficult.

Source : http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/can-l-a-s-trendy-pan-am-experience-make-a-landing-on-the-las-vegas-strip/