SAHSA Route Network, 1993

A luscious example of SAHSA's advertising artistry was shown in the middle of last year, but the posts moved on before this equally elegant and attractive example could be featured: an almost railroad-like vine of routes creeps out from a central spine, showing a respectable reach for such a small carrier. Tegucigalpa, the presumed hub, is shown off the the side, completely off-center, below it are the cities of the isthmus, ending at Panama. The broader boughs of the trees, spinning off the top of the network like the kicking legs of a triskelion, are the American gateways: Houston, New Orleans, and Miami, with the Caribbean stops just below, surprisingly including Grand Cayman but also the domestic destinations of Roatan, La Ceiba, and San Pedro Sula—these may had international routes as well. Guatemala City and San Salvador branch off to the far right.

A gorgeous mural of the attractions of SAHSA's network lies at the ad's base, from the skyline of Houston, the icons of Disney World and a Gone with the Wind Antebellum scene at left, to the Mayan temples of Mesoamerica at center, to the fun and sun of the warm Caribbean, a merchant ship navigating the Panama Canal at upper right.

SAHSA Route Network, 1993

One of the member carriers of Grupo TACA is the International Airline of Honduras, SAHSA, shown here in a lucid advertisement from late in its independent life. There are as many routes out of the Honduran resort of San Pedro Sula and the Belizean cities as there are from the capital, Tegucigalpa. Houston, New Orleans, and Miami are the US gateways, and the airline flew as far south as Panama. Interestingly, there is no service to Mexico City or Cancún, although there was a flight from the Caribbean resort town of La Ceiba to tiny, Anglophone Grand Cayman. This service, along with flights to New Orleans, did not survive the rebranding into TACA.

Aviateca Timetable and Route Map, June 1993

Continuing with our posts on service between the US and Latin America, this twenty-year old artifact of Mesoamerican aviation is presented: a full intra-American flight schedule and route map for Guatemalan state carrier Aviateca in its Late Post-Classic phase, just prior to be absorbed into the fold of Grupo TACA of neighboring El Salvador.

The schedule stretches from Chicago to Panama, as does the small map at the lower right, showing a web of routes out of Guatemala City, including an unusual route to New Orleans, which would later be rerouted to Honduras after it taken over by TACA. Unfortunately, like the airline that committed to it, the route has not survived to the present day, and New Orleans' role as a primary gateway from the Midwest to Middle America is a distant memory. But here, there is also some sort of connecting service between Louisiana and Houston, which also links with Merida, in the middle of the Yucatan. Aside from its base of operations at La Aurora, the airline held a mini-hub at Flores, gateway to Tikal in the northern Peten department, links to Cancún and Belize. In a sense, Aviateca was the airline of the Mundo Maya, even in the mid-1990s. Yet the Quetzalcoatl was not to survive as its own fleet, becoming one of the five macaws of Grupo Taca just a few years after the publication of this pamphlet.