This article comments on the interest of Pan Am Corp. to proposed a merger deal to Northwest Airlines Inc. Ordinarily, Wall Street would view this plan as a transparent maneuver by Thomas Plaskett, chairman of Pan Am, to tempt Northwest to buy him out. After all, Pan Am, which has been selling off assets just to keep going, has searched for a partner since February 1989 without finding any takers. But the involvement of Prudential-Bache Securities and Airlie Group, as well as Equitable Life Assurance, has turned a far-out scheme into a respectable merger strategy. What the Prudential-Bache, Equitable and other investors in Airlie Group bring to the deal is something Pan Am has sorely lacked for years, money to invest. Estimates are that these backers provide more than $300 million in equity to a combined Pan Am and Northwest. With some real cash to anchor the deal and a generous tax shelter from Pan Am's 41 billion in tax-loss carryforwards, the merger looks terrific on paper. Pan Am and Northwest together would make the only truly global airline in the U.S., with extensive routes over the Atlantic and the Pacific. Pan Am would reenter the Asian market, where its name still has a lot of cachet. It is not clear whether Rothmeier, Plaskett, or someone else would run the new airline.