The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a large long-range airliner, with two passenger decks and a pressurized cabin. It carried 61 passengers and 18 berths on the main deck plus 14 in the lower deck lounge. It was one of the most advanced and capable of the propeller-driven transports, and among the most luxurious, but it was troubled by reliability issues and maintenance costs. Problems included catastrophic failures of propellers. During the few years in which it served, the 377 suffered 13 accidents, with a total of 140 fatalities. The most serious incident occurred on 1952, when a Pan Am flight lost an engine and crashed in the jungle in Brazil, killing all 50 people on board.
The longest nonstop flights were made from Tokyo to Honolulu, taking 19 hours. By 1960 Stratocruisers were being superseded by jets: the de Havilland Comet, Boeing 707, and Douglas DC-8. The last flight of the Pan Am was in November 1960, from Honolulu to Singapore, and the 377 was retired by Pan Am in 1961.
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