Editing Pan Am (section)

== Record-setting flights ==
At the outbreak of the war in the Pacific in December 1941, the ''[[Pacific Clipper]]'' was en route to New Zealand from San Francisco. Rather than risk flying back to Honolulu and being shot down by Japanese fighters, it was directed to fly west to [[New York, New York|New York]]. Starting on December 8, 1941, at [[Auckland]], New Zealand, the ''Pacific Clipper'' covered over 31,500 miles (50,694&nbsp;km), with stops including [[Surabaya]], [[Karachi]], [[Bahrain]], [[Khartoum]] and [[Kinshasa|Leopoldville]]. The ''Pacific Clipper'' landed at Pan American's [[LaGuardia Airport|LaGuardia Field]] seaplane base at 7:12 on the morning of January 6, 1942, completing the first commercial plane flight to circumnavigate the world.<ref name="Bull">{{cite web|last1=Bull|first1=John|title=The Long Way Round: The Plane that Accidentally Circumnavigated the World|url=https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/the-long-way-round-the-plane-that-accidentally-circumnavigated-the-world-c04ca734c6bb|website=Lapsed Historian|publisher=Medium.com|access-date=April 22, 2018|date=August 2014}}</ref>

During the mid-1970s, Pan Am set two round-the-world records. Liberty Bell Express, a [[Boeing 747SP|Boeing 747SP-21]] named ''Clipper Liberty Bell'', broke the commercial round-the-world record set by a [[Flying Tiger Line]] Boeing 707 with a new record of 46 hours, 50 seconds. The flight left New York-JFK on May 1, 1976, and returned on May 3. The flight stopped only in New Delhi and Tokyo, where a strike among the airport workers delayed it two hours. The flight beat the Flying Tiger Line's record by 16 hours 24 minutes.{{sfn|Baum|1997|p=43}}

In 1977, to commemorate its 50th birthday, Pan Am organized Flight 50, a round-the-world flight from San Francisco to San Francisco, this time over the [[North Pole]] and the [[South Pole]] with stops in [[Heathrow Airport|London Heathrow]], [[Cape Town Airport|Cape Town]] and [[Auckland Airport|Auckland]]. 747SP-21 ''Clipper New Horizons'' was the former ''Liberty Bell'', making the plane the only one to go around the globe over the [[Equator]] and the poles. The flight made it in 54 hours, 7 minutes, and 12 seconds, creating seven new world records certified by the [[Fédération Aéronautique Internationale|FAI]]. Captain Walter H. Mullikin, who commanded this flight, also commanded the Liberty Bell Express flight.{{sfn|Baum|1997|pp=43–45}}