Transportation: Lifeline in the Air

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Highways and railroads are primary lifelines in most parts of the world. But in the jungles and towering mountains of Latin America, the highways are few, and millions of people have never seen a railroad. The ties that bind are the air lanes. In Santíago, Chile, last week, 30 Latin American and U.S. aviation officials, including FAA Head Najeeb Halaby and CAB Chief Alan Boyd, gathered for a five-day discussion of ways to strengthen Latin America's aerial life line. Out of the meeting came an astonishing picture of aviation in a developing continent of only 220 million people.

Last year no fewer than 19 foreign and 66 scheduled domestic airlines were serving Latin America, one of the greatest proliferations of aviation service anywhere in the world. All told, the lines traveled some 5 billion passenger-miles, carried over 94 million ton-miles of cargo, and could point to some impressive traffic growth: 175% in the past ten years, v. 117% for the rest of the world. Argentina, Chile and Colombia have all more than tripled their passenger traffic since 1954; Uruguay is up almost 400%, while Brazil ranks third in the free world (after the U.S. and Canada) in the number of daily domestic flights.

In the U.S., Eastern Air Lines' low-cost Boston-New York-Washington shuttle was considered a remarkable innovation when it was started in 1961. The Brazilians have been doing it since 1959, with three airlines shuttling between Rio and Sāo Paulo at the rate of one flight every 20 minutes during rush hours.

Wing & a Prayer. Latin Americans have been air-minded almost from the first days of flight. The airplane smoothed over the continent's fractured geography, knitted together its scattered populations and—most important of all —proved a far cheaper means of transport than building highways or laying track. In 1919, Chile was the first country outside the U.S. to launch an airmail service; one year later, Colombia licensed the first commercial airline this side of the Atlantic; in 1934, Brazil established the first transatlantic air route with Germany—five years before Pan American connected the U.S. with Europe.

"In those days, we knew when the departure was, but the return was always uncertain," recalls Arturo Costa, a retired pilot with Uruguay's Pluna Airline. "Sometimes we had to leave the copilot behind to make room for an extra passenger." The flying is still often on a wing and a prayer. A few Latin American airlines have jets and turboprops. But most of them make do with aged DC-3s and hand-me-down DC-6s and Constellations, rigged to haul everything from cattle to campesino settlers on colonization projects.