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.

TACA: The Lima Hub, 2011

No corner of the globe has undergone such a radical re-alignment of aviation interests than Latin America, in which all but a handful of state carriers and private operators (not least including VIASA, VASP, Transbrasil, VARIG, Lloyd Aero Boliviano, Ladeco, Ecuatoriana, Aviateca, NICA, and Sahsa) have disappeared. In addition to the asphyxiatingly ubiquitous LAN Group, and a variety of promising mainline start-ups and a plethora of low-cost ventures, South America is now territory covered by Grupo TACA, through its 1999 merger with Avianca.

That marriage included the rebranding of a unit based at Lima, formerly known as TransAm but now operating as TACA Peru, with Avianca as a 49% shareholder. The division serves ten major cities from Santiago to Santa Cruz to Sao Paulo, and connects northwards to TACA's hubs in Central America as well as Mexico City and Miami.

TACA Airlines Network, 2011

Fast-forward from the previous post, and tiny El Salvador has, through merger and might, grown to one of the largest inter-American airlines and virtually the only international airline between Mexico and Panama, with focus cities in San Jose, Costa Rica and Guatemala City. The Spanish fine print at the bottom of the map mentions the original state carriers, such as LASCA, NICA, Aviateca, and newly-formed national divisions such as TACA Perú, that form the modern airline. The latter is based from a sizable hub at Lima, detailed in the next post.

In North America, the airline runs as far northwest as San Francisco and as far northeast as Toronto, although an earlier route to Boston failed. New Orleans is gone, but Orlando and Dallas have been added, along with highly-prestigious and lucrative routes to Washington and New York. The next few posts looks at the growing airline in detail.