The film’s four main characters – airline executive Juan Trippe, pilot Charles Lindbergh, airplane builder Igor Sikorsky and radio engineer Hugo Leuteritz – separately struggle to find a place in post-World War I aviation. Their struggles illuminate the challenges all aviation pioneers face in these early, uncertain days. After repeated setbacks, the four men join forces and, capitalizing on the Air Mail Act and the aviation mania triggered by Lindbergh’s 1927 transatlantic flight, set out to build an airline to South America: Pan Am.

As they push southward, Trippe, Sikorsky, Lindbergh and Leuteritz build larger flying boats, harness radio to navigate safely over great distances, and, with help from the U.S. government, outwit all competing airlines to dominate service to Latin America and launch the global air tourism industry. But all of this is merely preparation for their ultimate goal: flying the oceans. Trippe spends six years carefully laying plans for an Atlantic crossing – only to have his hopes dashed when Britain refuses to let Pan Am’s planes land because their own planes can’t make the ocean crossing. With $2 million in new planes on order, Trippe is stymied, with no ocean to cross.