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.