Panair do Brasil

A Constellation with “Panair do Brasil” titles on its way from Rio to Europe, later a DC-8 with the name of a Brazilian pioneer on its nose: for three decades Panair do Brasil was the airline with which Brazil reached the world. It began in 1929 as an offshoot of a US company, belonged to Pan Am for a long time and ended abruptly in 1965 – not through bankruptcy, but by government act. This page shows you the history, the fleet, the connections to Germany and how to place old Panair photos correctly.

Panair do Brasil at a glance

Panair do Brasil was a historic Brazilian network airline headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. Its home was the two airports of the then capital: the downtown field Santos Dumont, where the administration was also located, and the international airport Galeão. From there the airline operated a dense domestic network deep into the Amazon and a long-haul network to Europe, the Middle East and neighboring countries in South America.

The company was founded on October 22, 1929 as NYRBA do Brasil, the Brazilian subsidiary of the US company NYRBA (New York, Rio and Buenos Aires Line). Already in April 1930 Pan American bought the parent company, and in November 1930 the subsidiary received its well-known name. It goes back to Pan Am’s telegraph address “PANAIR”.

Over time the US subsidiary became a Brazilian airline. From the 1940s Pan Am gave up shares step by step, and by 1961 they were entirely in Brazilian hands. Four years later it was all over: on February 10, 1965 the military government revoked the airline’s operating license.

Codes, callsign and registrations

• IATA code PB: appeared in the airline’s flight numbers, for example on the Europe flight PB22.
• ICAO code PAB: the three-letter identifier as listed in reference works.
• Callsign BANDEIRANTE: The “Bandeirantes” were explorers and settlers of the colonial era – a name that suited the self-image of an airline that opened up Brazil’s interior. You can read more about such radio names in the article Airline callsigns and their history.
• Registration PP-: All aircraft were registered in Brazil. At Panair it stands out that many aircraft began with PP-P, for example the DC-8 PP-PDT or the DC-7C PP-PDO.

As with all historic airlines: IATA codes are reassigned after a company ends. A flight number with PB before 1965 belongs to Panair; for later documents you need to look more closely. How registrations are built in general is explained in the guide Understanding aircraft registrations.

The history of Panair do Brasil

Flying boats on the coast: the beginnings

On December 23, 1929, the young company’s first flight took off from Calabouço airport in Rio, later Santos Dumont, for Buenos Aires. At that time there were hardly any paved runways along the Brazilian coast and on the Amazon, but plenty of water. Accordingly, the first fleet consisted mainly of flying boats: the Consolidated Commodore and Sikorsky S-38, later the larger Sikorsky S-43 “Baby Clipper”. The kinship with Pan Am’s famous flying boats like the Boeing 314 Clipper is no coincidence – the parent company set the direction.

From March 1931 Panair offered regular passenger service between Belém and Rio. The airline built not only routes but also infrastructure: it built airfields in the north and northeast of the country with its own funds and for years operated important parts of Brazil’s aeronautical radio and telecommunications facilities.

Landplanes and the Second World War

In the late 1930s and early 1940s landplanes were added: the Lockheed Electra, a few Douglas DC-2s and above all 14 Lockheed Lodestars. At the same time the change in ownership began. In 1942 Pan Am sold a large block of shares to Brazilian investors, and by the end of 1943 its stake was only 58 percent. By 1946 at the latest the majority was in Brazilian hands; the sources give slightly different years here.

To Europe with the Constellation

The big chapter began in 1946. In March Panair received its first Lockheed Constellation, and on April 27, 1946 the first international flight left Rio via Recife, Dakar, Lisbon and Paris to London. It is often said that Panair was the first international airline to land at the then-new London Heathrow Airport. What made the Constellation special technically you can learn in the article on the Lockheed Constellation.

In the following years the network grew rapidly:

Year	New destinations
1946	Recife, Dakar, Lisbon, Paris, London – shortly afterward Madrid and Rome
1947	Cairo and Istanbul
1948	Zurich, Frankfurt, Montevideo and Buenos Aires
1950	Santiago de Chile, Lima and Beirut
1954	Hamburg and Düsseldorf

In parallel ran domestic service with the Douglas DC-3, of which Panair used a total of 23. In the Amazon region the airline stayed with water flying: from 1948 eight PBY Catalinas flew to places on the river that were hardly reachable otherwise. You can read more about the postwar workhorse in the article on the history of the DC-3.

The Comet that never came

In 1953 Panair ordered four de Havilland Comet 2s and would thereby have entered the jet age early. After the accidents with the British jet and the discovery of design flaws, the airline withdrew the order in 1954. How the problems of the Comet came about is described in the article De Havilland Comet – the first jet airliner. On long-haul Panair then initially continued to rely on piston aircraft.

DC-7C, DC-8 and Caravelle

From 1957 Panair flew the Douglas DC-7C, the long-range version of the DC-7. With it the airline operated the “Voo da Amizade”, the friendship flight between Brazil and Portugal, together with TAP Air Portugal from 1960 to 1965. For a time there were also four Douglas DC-6s in the DC-6A version.

In 1961 the jet age began with the Douglas DC-8: four DC-8-33s took over the Europe routes. From 1962/63 Panair also used four Caravelle VI-Rs on its domestic main routes. That gave the airline a modern fleet in the early 1960s – shortly before its story ended.

Panair in Germany

For aviation fans in Germany, Panair is more than an exotic footnote. In 1948 the airline added Frankfurt to its network, and in 1954 Hamburg and Düsseldorf followed. That made Panair one of the early overseas airlines connecting the Federal Republic with South America after the war – at a time when Lufthansa was only rebuilding its long-haul operation.

The flights were long journeys with several stopovers, typically via West Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. If you come across a Constellation or DC-7C with Panair titles in Frankfurt or Hamburg in old family albums, timetables or newspaper archives, you have a real piece of aviation history in front of you.

The fleet at a glance

The following table summarizes the most important types that reference works list for Panair:

Type	Number	Period of use	Spotter tip
Consolidated Commodore	7	1930–1940	Large flying boat of the early years
Sikorsky S-38	6	1930–1938	Amphibian with twin tail
Sikorsky S-43 “Baby Clipper”	7	1936–1947	Smaller sister of the Pan Am Clippers
Lockheed Lodestar	14	1941–1947	Twin-engine, twin vertical stabilizers
Douglas DC-3	23	1945–1965	Backbone of domestic service
Lockheed Constellation (L-049/L-149)	14	1946–1965	Triple vertical stabilizer, dolphin-shaped fuselage
Consolidated PBY Catalina	8	1948–1965	Amphibian for the Amazon
Douglas DC-7C	6	1957–1965	Long-haul, also friendship flight with TAP
Douglas DC-6A	4	1959–1961	Briefly in the fleet
Douglas DC-8-33	4	1961–1965	The airline’s first jet
Sud Aviation Caravelle VI-R	4	1962–1965	Tail-mounted engines, domestic main routes

At the shutdown in 1965 the fleet consisted of 24 aircraft. Caution with the Constellation: Panair flew the early versions L-049 and L-149, not the stretched Super Constellation L-1049 that you know from airlines like Lufthansa.

How to recognize Panair

On historic photos, the first thing that helps you is the “Panair do Brasil” titles on the fuselage. Green and gold, the colors of Brazil, are considered the airline’s brand colors. The livery changed over the decades, so it is worth looking for further clues.

The second clue is the aircraft name. Many Panair aircraft carried names following the pattern “Bandeirante …”, combined with the name of a historic explorer. The DC-8 PP-PDT, for example, was called “Bandeirante Brás Cubas”. Together with the registration, a photo can often be attributed to an individual aircraft.

Accidents in Panair’s history

Like many airlines of its era, Panair experienced several serious accidents. In the 1940s several Lodestars crashed, and in September 1946 a DC-3 hit a mountain in Minas Gerais. On July 28, 1950 a Constellation crashed near Porto Alegre, and on November 1, 1961 a DC-7C near Recife. On August 20, 1962 the DC-8 PP-PDT overran the end of the runway in a failed takeoff at Galeão and ended up in Guanabara Bay; more than a dozen people died. In December 1962 a Constellation crashed near Manaus, and all 50 people aboard died.

The end: February 10, 1965

Shutdown overnight

In April 1964 the military had taken power in Brazil. On February 10, 1965 the Ministry of Aeronautics under Eduardo Gomes suspended Panair’s operating license. The international routes went immediately to Varig, the domestic routes to Cruzeiro do Sul. That very night a Varig Boeing 707 flew the Europe flight PB22 in place of the scheduled Panair DC-8 – no passenger was left on the ground, but Panair no longer existed as an airline.

Panair applied for court-supervised composition proceedings, but a judge declared the company bankrupt just a few days later, without any creditor having requested it. Officially the government justified the step with debts to the state and suppliers. Critics, on the other hand, pointed out that Panair had the lowest debts to the federal government compared with other Brazilian airlines at the time.

Celma: the engine shop in Petrópolis

Since 1957 the company also included Celma in Petrópolis, which overhauled aircraft engines and became the largest facility of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. In January 1966 the government expropriated the business by decree, after which it worked mainly for the Brazilian Air Force. Celma was privatized in 1991, and General Electric took the majority in 1996. The business still operates today under the name GE Celma.

Late rehabilitation

The legal reckoning dragged on for decades:

• 1969: New decrees expropriated Panair’s aircraft and prohibited airlines in general from applying for court-supervised composition proceedings.
• December 14, 1984: Brazil’s Supreme Court found that the airline had operated properly and obliged the state to pay compensation.
• 1995: The bankruptcy was lifted.
• 2009: The route concessions were formally revoked.
• December 2014: The final report of the National Truth Commission judged the shutdown to be politically rather than economically motivated.
• 2020: A federal court recognized that the owners had been persecuted by the dictatorship.

Panair and the other Brazilians

The end of Panair fundamentally changed Brazilian air transport. Varig, with the long-haul routes it took over, became the country’s dominant international airline – until its own end decades later. You will find further chapters of this story at VASP of São Paulo and at Transbrasil. Today LATAM Airlines Brasil shapes long-haul traffic from Brazil, and its most important hub is São Paulo-Guarulhos.

If you want to understand the roots of Panair, you cannot get around Pan Am. The story of the US parent company is told in the article Pan Am – rise and fall of a legend.

Panair today: a topic for archive and collection

You will never see a Panair aircraft in flight again. The airline remains fascinating for everyone who collects historic aviation: old slides from Frankfurt or Hamburg, timetables, inflight programs and luggage tags. A Constellation in Panair colors stands in the Museu TAM in São Carlos – check before a visit whether the museum is open. The brand itself was reactivated in 2020, but there is no flight operation under the Panair name.

If you digitize old pictures, record type, registration, aircraft name, place and date. How to build such an archive sensibly is shown in the guide Archiving aircraft photos.

Common mix-ups

• Taking Panair for a purely US airline – it belonged entirely to Pan Am only at the beginning and was majority Brazilian from the 1940s and entirely Brazilian from 1961.
• Equating Panair do Brasil with Pan Am – both shared the origin of the name but flew under their own codes, registrations and flight numbers.
• Thinking the bankruptcy was economically justified – courts and the Truth Commission later saw the end as politically motivated.
• Confusing the Constellation with the Super Constellation – Panair flew the shorter versions L-049 and L-149.
• Confusing the callsign BANDEIRANTE with the Embraer turboprop – the later type bears the same name but has nothing to do with Panair.
• Assuming the Comet was in the fleet – the 1953 order was canceled in 1954, and Panair never flew a Comet.

Conclusion

For 35 years Panair do Brasil was Brazil’s gateway to the world. A US subsidiary with flying boats became a Brazilian long-haul airline with Constellations, DC-7Cs and DC-8s that connected Rio with London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Düsseldorf. The end came overnight in 1965 and is seen today as politically motivated. For you as a spotter, Panair lives on in old photos, timetables and memories – and if you read titles, type, Bandeirante name and registration together, you can place these pictures with confidence.