Caribair (Puerto Rico)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Caribair was a major airline that flew out of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was the first, and as of 2006, only Puerto Rican airline to use jet aircraft for their services.

Caribair Logo from early 1950's

[edit] History

Caribair began flying in the late 1940s as Caribbean Atlantic Airlines, a subsidiary of Florida based National Airlines. The airline's first timetable was published on May 15, 1945 [1]. At the beginning, Caribbean Atlantic Airlines served Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. In 1949, The United States Virgin Islands Governor, William Henry Hastie, flew on Caribair [2].

Caribair named the DC-9 "Fiesta Jets"

Caribair's service was popular both among North Americans traveling between Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, and with Puerto Rican residents. By 1950, the airline's name had officially been changed to Caribair and services to the Dominican Republic were started. Caribair kept growing during the 1950s and through the first part of the 1960s, and, by 1962, the international airline served the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, St. Thomas and St. Croix in the United States Virgin Islands, St. Maarten, and the domestic destinations of Mayaguez and Mercedita Airport in Ponce.

Meanwhile, other events outside of the airline's circle had started to take place. Eastern Airlines wanted a larger presence in Puerto Rico and so it helped finance the opening of the Dorado Beach hotel, in Dorado. The hotel was close to Dorado's airport, which was a former military air base that reopened as a civilian airport in the early 1960s, shortly after Lawrence Rockefeller opened his new hotel facility. Eastern began commercial jet service to that airport and Caribair began operating some of Eastern's flights on behalf of the Miami based airline company. In order to complete the new task, Caribair ordered new McDonnell Douglas DC9 jets, becoming, as aforementioned, the first Puerto Rican airline to offer modern jet service [3]. The DC-9 jets allowed Caribair to expand their route system and the airline soon began services to Miami, St. Lucia, Caracas, Grenada, Barbados, Martinique, St. Vincent and Jamaica. In 1972-73 Caribair's service to Miami was as follows: San Juan - Santo Domingo - Port-au-Prince - Kingston - Montego Bay - Miami with the return trip making the same stops in the opposite direction. This service was conducted using Caribair's DC-9's, which were nicknamed the "Fiesta jets". Eastern, meanwhile, began to feel the Puerto Rican airline's pressure, specially since Caribair had inaugurated services to Miami, Eastern's hub city.

In June of 1970, a member of the Puerto Rican Air National Guard apparently received a report both from a Caribair jet and a Pan American World Airways one, where both pilots claimed to have seen an UFO close to San Juan's Isla Verde International Airport. The FAA released a statement about this incident in 1977 [4].

Early during the 1970s, service was established to Atlanta, Delta Air Lines' hub airport. With Eastern fighting Delta for market supremacy both in Atlanta and in the South, the North American airline felt it was necessary to buy Caribair. The sale was completed by the summer of 1973, by which time Delta had also realized the potential of Puerto Rico as a destination from the South. Delta returned to the Puerto Rican market during the middle 1970s, after decades of ausence in the island. Eastern bought Caribair's entire fleet and, in 1980, Eastern established a hub at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, which in years previous had been Caribair and Pan Am's hub. Other airlines, such as Prinair and Fina Air, tried to follow Caribair's footsteps as Puerto Rico's international airline, but those two folded before getting jet aircraft, and did not last as long in the airline industry as Caribair did.

In 2002, a different airline, Dominican company Caribair, began to fly using the same name.