Skygods was part history, part memoir: a look-back at the final twenty-five years in the life of Pan American World Airways. The book begins with Pan Am at the zenith of its career - record profits, the world's largest fleet of jets, the 747 on the way, SSTs on order, and plans for commercial space flight.

And then something happened. What happened is viewed through the eyes of a multitude of players, including a pilot named Rob Martinside. Martinside is a partly biographical character and partly a composite of several Pan Am pilots (I'm not saying what part is biographical). "Skygods" was a name invented to describe the salty, imperious Pan Am captains who commanded the great flying boats like the China Clipper - and who, in the 1960s, were still commanding Pan Am jets like they were ships at sea. At Pan Am, Skygodliness extended beyond the cockpit; it went all the way to top management. In the book, Skygods becomes a metaphor for the corporate arrogance and hubris that destroyed the mighty Pan Am.

We follow Pan Am's long slide from glory, from the arrival of the 747, the disastrous route and asset sales, the failed attempts to gain a domestic route system, to the bombed ruins of Lockerbie and the final inglorious day of insolvency.

Published by William Morrow & Co., Skygods went through several printings, was a selection of the Readers Digest Book Club, and was reprinted in the U.K., France, and China. It has been published in a new edition.

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT
SKYGODS:

"Gandt may be the best unknown aviation writer around, though I'm among the admirers of Skygods, his inside look at the haughty yet collapsing Pan Am for which he then flew, as well as his more recent Bogeys and Bandits, an account of the training of Navy F/A-18 pilots."
-- Stephan Wilkinson, Air & Space Feb/Mar 2000


"A lively, highly readable, and by turns tragic, comic, nostalgic, and horrific story of the slow death of the airline that promised us the moon. Whether you fly in the front of the airplane or in the back, this story by and about pilots is as close as you can get to being there."
-- Air & Space


"Robert Gandt is a former Pan Am pilot who also happens to have the pen of a poet. Skygods is a captivating book that vividly recreates the glory of not just Pan Am, but the brashness, risk-taking, and high-octane energy that characterized U. S. commercial aviation in the twentieth-century."
-- The Christian Science Monitor


"Whether you fly in the front of the airplane or in the back, this story by and about pilots is as close as you can get to being there."
-- Smithsonian


"There is no other book on any airline that grabs you like Skygods. It is incredibly, personally detailed. It reveals the people behind Pan Am, good, great, or bad. And it captures the story of Pan Am - the adventure, legend, and business."
-- Martin Caidin
Author of Cyborg and Marooned, Creator of The Six Million Dollar Man


"Robert Gandt's book Skygods accurately depicts the demise of Pan Am with a depth and human element often missing from books of this type."
-- David North, Editor-in-chief, Aviation Week

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