Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano

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Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano
LAB Airlines logo
Boeing 727-200 CP-1366 in Cochabamba
IATA code : LB
ICAO code : LLB
Call sign : LLOYDAEREO
Founding: 1925
Operation stopped: 2010
Seat: Cochabamba , BoliviaBoliviaBolivia 
Turnstile :

Santa Cruz-Viru Viru

Home airport : Santa Cruz-Viru Viru
Number of employees: approx. 1,600
Frequent Flyer Program : Líder Club
Fleet size: 4th
Aims: Latin America, USA, Spain
Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano ceased operations in 2010. The information in italics refer to the last status before the end of operation.

Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano , LAB for short , was a Bolivian airline based in Cochabamba .

history

The Lloyd Aereo Boliviano SA (LAB) was on September 15, 1925 established. In 2010 it was the oldest Latin American airline that had operated under its founding name. This could previously be claimed by the Colombian Avianca , which went bankrupt at the beginning of the new millennium and is now flying again as the New Avianca after a long break.

First years

In July 1925, representatives of the South American Junkers Mission, a sales subsidiary of the Junkers aircraft factory, arrived in Bolivia with a Junkers F 13 . They had previously successfully demonstrated the machine in Argentina. The Junkers F 13 also proved to be an attraction in Bolivia - including on August 5, 1925, during the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of Bolivia's independence in Sucre, the constitutional capital. The German community in Bolivia, which had long been dissatisfied with the poor infrastructure, was extremely impressed by the aircraft. On September 15, 1925, Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano (LAB) was founded and the demonstration machine was bought from the Junkers Mission. On December 24, 1925, regular flight operations between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz began with the Junkers F-13 baptized El Oriente . Thanks to a government participation, LAB was able to acquire three more F-13s after a short time. However, crashes and aircraft that were no longer operational soon got the company into trouble. Junkers sent aid to South America and also contributed financially to LAB. So it was possible for him to buy the larger Junkers W34 . In 1930 the LAB started an air mail service with the W34 from the Bolivian seat of government La Paz to Corumbá in Brazil . From there, Syndicato Condor , a subsidiary of Lufthansa , flew on to Rio de Janeiro.

Chaco war

LAB Douglas DC-3 CP-735 (1972)

In 1932 LAB procured the first multi-engine aircraft with a Ford AT-5 Trimotor , which was lost after a few months, and a Junkers Ju 52 / 3m for up to 16 passengers. In addition, the Bolivian state of LAB presented two Junkers Ju 52 / 3m available, in return, the LAB made with their aircraft logistics support in the war against Paraguay to the El Chaco region ( Chaco War 1932-1935). After the war for Bolivia ended in defeat, the state finally handed over the two Ju 52 / 3m to the LAB in 1935 and received a 48 percent stake in return.

In 1936 the LAB fleet consisted of a total of 11 aircraft: three Junkers F 13 , two Junkers W 33 , two Junkers W34 , a Sikorsky S-38B flying boat and three Junkers Ju 52 / 3m .

Nationalization and the beginning of the jet age

LAB Boeing 707 CP-1698 (Miami, 1997)

On May 14, 1941 , the state acquired the majority of shares in the financially troubled LAB in order to stabilize it. This succeeded, and the LAB was able to expand successfully in the 1950s. In 1968 the LAB decided to enter the age of nozzles and ordered Boeing 727 jets . The first Boeing 727-100 (CP-861) was delivered and put into service in 1970. In the 1970s, LAB was able to expand its route network with the new jets and establish non-stop connections to Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Chile.

privatization

As part of the neoliberal economic policy from the end of the 1980s, most of the large state-owned companies were partially privatized ("capitalized"), with the state selling the majority of the shares to private investors and retaining only minority stakes in order to continue to control the companies and to profit from the company's success with dividends participate and finance the pension fund.

In 1995 the Brazilian VASP took over 50% of the shares and the management. The color scheme of the LAB machines was optically matched to that of the VASP. After a few years it became clear that the financially troubled VASP systematically withdrew capital from the LAB and brought it financially to the brink of ruin. In December 2001, under political pressure from the Bolivian government, the shares in VASP were sold to the Bolivian entrepreneur Ernesto ("Tito") Asbún Gazaui, who also took over the management. LAB was again a purely Bolivian company.

Financial decline

At the beginning of February 2006, the LAB pilots went on strike because they had not received any salaries for months. After a 9-day strike, the LAB was placed under provisional government administration for 90 days in order to restart flight operations. This should limit the economic damage for stranded travelers and the resulting damage to Bolivia's image abroad.

The receiver found a critical financial situation:

  • LAB was significantly behind on the rates for its leased aircraft. At the end of February 2006, the Aviation Capital Group seized two leased Boeing 727-200s; at the end of March 2006, Pegasus Aviation also secured the seizure of its two Boeing 767s, whereupon LAB had to restrict its domestic air traffic and stop flights to Madrid entirely.
  • The state pension fund of Bolivia announced that LAB had not paid any social security contributions for years and threatened to seize the remaining aircraft because of the arrears in the millions.
  • LAB was in arrears with IATA membership fees , which is why it was excluded from the IATA booking and accounting system.

The state administration was invalidated and repealed by the Supreme Court. As the provisional state guarantees were no longer applicable, LAB became insolvent, and at the same time the workforce went on strike against the managing director Asbún, whose mismanagement they blame for the company's crisis. Asbún finally offered to sell its shares.

Then the government tried to work out a restructuring and reorganization concept for the LAB together with Lufthansa Consulting, while very limited air traffic (at the end of June 2006 LAB had only two operational aircraft) was maintained.

This concept was unsuccessful. In April 2007, the creeping bankruptcy culminated in the arrest of three managing directors, Franklin Taendler, Luis Durán and Fernando Rocha. They were accused of fraud, selling tickets for three flights to Madrid when only one was planned. Between the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, almost all LAB flights were suspended until further notice, only a few charter flights were operated, after which there were no more flights. In 2010 the flight license was revoked.

In 2018 it was announced optimistically that the company was ready to resume flight operations. The Boeing 727-200 with the aircraft registration CP-1366 is ready to fly from April, and two more aircraft are available. The company has never been bankrupt. LAB also complained that other companies were using areas at the airfield that they owned.

aims

In addition to a domestic route network, LAB operated international connections to the neighboring countries Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru as well as to Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, the USA (Miami, Washington DC) and Spain (Madrid).

fleet

Fleet at the end of operations

In December 2010 the LAB fleet consisted of four aircraft:

(Some of the B727-200s were equipped with winglets )

Previously deployed aircraft

In the course of its existence, the company also flew:

Incidents

Since 1945 there have been 32 total losses of aircraft at LAB; in 15 of them a total of 359 people were killed. Example:

  • On February 5, 1960, a Douglas DC-4 of Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano (CP-609) crashed shortly after take-off from Cochabamba Airport (Bolivia) in a lagoon 15 kilometers south of the take-off airport. According to reports, an engine had caught fire. All 59 occupants, 4 crew members and 55 passengers were killed.
  • On October 13, 1976, a Boeing 707-131F (N730JP) , which Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano had leased from the US Jet Power, took off from Viru Viru Airport on a cargo flight to Miami . The take-off run took an exceptionally long time and the machine took off slowly at the end of the tarmac, grazed trees and roofs, crashed onto a football field and went up in flames. In the accident, the three-man crew and 88 people died on the ground, and another 78 people were seriously injured. The aircraft accident investigations were made more difficult by the fact that the flight data recorder was out of order. Ultimately, the investigators came to the conclusion that the accident was caused by the fact that the crew had not managed to achieve the acceleration necessary for a safe start; one contributing factor was crew fatigue.

See also

Web links

Commons : Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The slow death of an airline picture series in Handelsblatt Online, August 22, 2013
  2. ↑ List of defunct airlines at airlinehistory.co.uk ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.airlinehistory.co.uk
  3. ↑ List of Bolivian airlines at airlineupdate.com ( Memento of the original from May 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.airlineupdate.com
  4. ^ The airline Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano, LAB, is ready to fly , newsroom.aviator.aero, March 6, 2018
  5. ^ The airline Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano, LAB, is ready to fly , aerolatinnews, March 7, 2018
  6. ↑ Hay mercado para otra línea aérea en el país, según agencias , ElDeber, March 20, 2018
  7. ↑ LAB y BoA entran en disputa por terrenos , ElDeber.com, September 19, 2018
  8. ↑ ch-aviation.ch - Fleet of the Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) accessed on December 12, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ch-aviation.ch
  9. ^ REG Davies: Airlines of Latin America since 1919. Putnam Aeronautical Books, London 1997, ISBN 0-85177-889-5 , pp. 604-606.
  10. ^ Ulrich Klee, Frank Bucher et al .: jp airline-fleets international . Zurich Airport 1970–2007.
  11. ↑ Accident Statistics LAB, Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on January 23, 2016.
  12. ^ Accident report DC-3 CB-31 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on August 9, 2019.
  13. ^ Accident report DC-4 CP-609 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on August 11, 2019.
  14. ↑ accident report B 707-131 N730JP , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 9 August of 2019.