Ask the pilot

Caracas: Where DC-9s go to die. Also, why Venezuela's majestic Angel Falls was named after an American pilot.

By Patrick Smith

Oct 1, 2004 | The thing about Venezuela is that it has no airline. Well, to clarify, it has plenty of airlines; just no national flag carrier. Not anymore.

Admittedly, "flag carrier" is an increasingly ambiguous term these days. We've reached an age when many countries, even small, politically embattled ones, feature multiple international airlines. The term "official" is open to interpretation: Do we choose the biggest? The oldest? Those that are government owned?

Venezuela's two historical mainstays have both, sadly, disappeared.

First there was VIASA, created in 1960 as an independent spinoff of the government-owned Línea Aeropostal Venezolana (Aeropostal). VIASA's blue and orange jets flew throughout the Americas and Western Europe. In 1972 it became the first South American airline to fly the Boeing 747, acquiring a single leased jumbo dubbed Orinoco after Venezuela's famous river. Final call came in 1997 on the heels of an acrimonious takeover by Spain's Iberia, itself near bankruptcy at the time. In 37 years, the airline suffered exactly one fatal incident -- a crash at Maracaibo in 1969.

With VIASA shuttered, AVENSA stepped in. AVENSA had been established as a Pan Am subsidiary after World War II. Technically AVENSA still exists, with a single Brasilia turboprop keeping the name alive. But for all intents and purposes the company, whose Boeings and Douglases once reached Madrid and New York, is defunct. Kicking around Venezuela's airports, one sees AVENSA fossils everywhere: old check-in signs, rusted luggage carts, derelict airplane stairways -- the name still visible through cracked blue paint. If the logo looks vaguely familiar, that's because it is. Though sold to local interests in the mid-1970s, the carrier's livery continued to bear a not-so-accidental resemblance to that of the old Pan American -- the winged blue globe and barbed, interlocked typeface.

Nowadays, Venezuela's de facto national airline is probably Aeropostal, the present-day version of the company that spawned VIASA in 1960. Then and now Venezuela's oldest airline, Aeropostal was founded in 1930, though its network has chiefly been a regional one. Trying somewhat to fill the void, out-of-country routes now extend to Miami, Lima, Bogota and elsewhere.

My air-fleet books show more than 30 commercial entities in 2004 Venezuela, including a half-dozen upstart DC-9 and 737 operators, most having emerged in the past 10 years or so. Otherwise, the bulk of the country's carriers are sightseeing, cargo or air-taxi outfits, usually employing single-engine workhorse Cessnas like the Stationair 6 or the turbine-powered Caravan.

A map of Venezuela is pocked with hundreds of remote airstrips. No surprise. Like the bush flying of Alaska, the air system of rural South America is wrought from inaccessibility. The easiest way around Andean peaks, over the rugged altiplano and into the hinterlands of Amazonia, is typically by plane. For partly this reason, South America is home to some of the world's oldest and proudest airlines. Even with 75 birthdays, Aeropostal is outdone by Colombia's Avianca, founded in 1919 and second-oldest on earth. Further south, Bolivia's LAB (Lloyd Aereo Boliviano) traces its origins to 1925. (For comparison, the oldest U.S. airline is Northwest, dating to 1926.)

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