Both airlines were established by Ralph Ambrose O'Neill for the transportation of post and passengers using seaplanes between the United States, Brazil and Argentina, flying over the east coast of the continent.

Initially, O'Neill tried to purchase ETA – Empresa de Transporte Aéreo, a Brazilian airline which claimed to have exclusive concessions to fly within Brazil.

The first flight took off from the Calabouço Airport (which in 1936 would be officially named Santos Dumont Airport) in Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Aires with intermediate stops on December 23, 1929, and in January 1930 it started flying between Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza with intermediate stops in Campos dos Goytacazes, Vitória, Caravelas, Ilhéus, Salvador, Aracaju, Maceió, Recife and Natal.

This service was later extended to Buenos Aires and the operations enhanced to the point that it took the same 5 days, with overnight stops in Fortaleza, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre.

In 1937, Panair opened its own dedicated headquarters at Santos Dumont Airport in Rio de Janeiro, a project inspired by the Pan American Seaplane Base and Terminal Building in Miami, including not only passenger operations but also offices and hangars.

As World War II erupted, Panair gained a clear advantage in relation to its fiercest competitor, Syndicato Condor, controlled by German capital.

Furthermore, since the newly created Ministry of Air Force did not have the capacity or technique to build and maintain air fields, by the Federal Decree-Law 3.462 of June 25, 1941, Panair was authorized to build, enhance and maintain the airports of Macapá, Belém, São Luís, Fortaleza, Natal, Recife, Maceió, and Salvador, which remain operational to the present day.

In fact, the excellence was so well known at the time that years later its DC-8-33 appeared in a handful of movies, including the Italian-French co-production, Copacabana Palace (1962),[2] and the French productions La Peau Douce (1964),[3][4] and L'homme de Rio (1964).

Between November 30, 1960, and 1965 Panair operated with TAP-Transportes Aéreos Portugueses the Voo da amizade (English: Friendship Flight), between São Paulo-Congonhas, Rio de Janeiro-Galeão, and Lisbon, with stops in Recife and Sal, using a dedicated Douglas DC-7C aircraft bearing the names of both airlines, TAP flight numbers and crew of the two airlines.

Only Brazilian and Portuguese citizens or foreigners with permanent residence in Brazil or Portugal could purchase tickets for those flights, which were extremely popular due to their low fares.

[8] In fact, that very night, the Douglas DC-8-33 scheduled to operate flight PB22, departing at 10:30 PM from Rio de Janeiro-Galeão to Recife, Lisbon, Paris-Orly and Frankfurt was immediately replaced by a Varig Boeing 707.

[11] It has since been determined that the shutdown of Panair do Brasil was not based on financial or technical reasons, but on other political factors, such as the military government persecution of the company's shareholders, businessmen Celso da Rocha Miranda and Mário Wallace Simonsen.

On August 27, 2009, after a 44-year delay, the Air Command of the Brazilian Ministry of Defence revoked Panair's route and schedule concessions,[12] which are mandatory for airline operations.

Former employees of Panair do Brasil, their families and friends attend an annual reunion on the week of October 22, the airline's birthday, in Rio de Janeiro.

[13] Panair do Brasil has been featured in a number of Brazilian television productions, such as Anos Rebeldes (1992), Hilda Furacão (1998), JK (TV series) (2006) and Maysa: Quando Fala o Coração (2009).

In October 2012, director Ricardo Pinto e Silva and journalist Daniel Leb Sasaki began production for a new feature documentary film called Mario Wallace Simonsen, entre a memória e a história, still unreleased.

[16] On March 11, 2019, Brazilian newspaper O Globo informed that Daniel Leb Sasaki's book about the demise of Panair do Brasil, called "Pouso forçado: a história por trás da destruição da Panair do Brasil pelo regime militar", would become a TV series directed by Mauro Lima and screenwritten by Rosana Rodini and the author himself.