Along the first countries to have regular airlines in Latin America were Chile with LAN Chile (today LAN Airlines), Colombia with Avianca, Mexico with Mexicana de Aviación, Brazil with Varig, and TACA as a bound of several airlines of Central American countries (Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Nicaragua). All the previous airlines started regular operations before World War II.

Aeromexico is also in service since 1934, but was initially called Aeronaves de México. The same situation happened with other regional airlines, such as Aerolineas Argentinas. All of these airlines are still in service.

The air travel market has evolved rapidly over recent years in Latin America. Some industry estimations over 2000 new aircraft will begin service over the next five years in this region.

These airlines serve domestic flights within their countries, as well as connections within Latin America and also overseas flights to North America, Europe, Australia, Africa and Asia.

Just one airline, LAN (Latin American Networks) has international subsidiaries: Chile as the central operation along with Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and some operations in the Dominican Republic.

The main hubs in Latin America are Sao Paulo in Brazil, Bogota in Colombia,Caracas in Venezuela, Guayaquil in Ecuador, Lima in Peru, Mexico City in Mexico, Buenos Aires in Argentina, and Santiago in Chile.

Source: Airline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia