In 1939 Pan American Airways began regular transatlantic passenger service using Boeing 314 flying boats. These large fixed-wing Clippers linked North America and Europe by air shortly before war closed many routes. The service symbolised luxury, modernity, and global reach.

The Clipper era gave travel writing and popular fiction glamorous images of oceanic flight, elite passengers, and aerial cosmopolitanism. It also marked a poignant threshold before wartime aviation transformed glamour into mobilisation.