Boeing 377 Stratocruiser 377-10-26S Super Stratocruiser

The Super Stratocruiser was not a new production block but the refitting of ten Pan American 377-10-26 aircraft with more powerful engines and greater fuel capacity, specifically for the airline's transatlantic flights.

The context explains the modification. The 377 was conceived for premium service on transoceanic routes, and that is where its combination of luxury and cost made sense: most operators put it on long routes where higher fares could offset the high operating costs. The type's longest non-stop flights by distance were precisely Pan American's between Tokyo and Honolulu, over four winter seasons from 1952-53. In January 1953 two weekly non-stops were scheduled with a flight time of eleven hours and one minute thanks to tailwinds; the following August all flights took nineteen hours with a stop at Wake Island Airfield. In the winter of 1953-54 one Tokyo-Honolulu flight covered the 6,201 km great-circle distance in nine hours thirty-five minutes.

By 1960 the jets — the de Havilland Comet, the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8 — had displaced the Stratocruiser. By November 1960 only a weekly Pan Am flight between Honolulu and Singapore remained, and the airline retired the type in 1961.