SAHSA was founded on January 2, 1945, with help from
Pan American Airways under the name
Servicio Aéreo de Honduras S.A. (SAHSA).
Pan American Airways owned 40%, the
Honduran government owned 40% and 20% was owned by private investors.
combi aircraft operating a mixed passenger-freight schedule at
Miami International Airport in July 1976 The airline began operations on October 22, 1945, using a
Douglas DC-2 (XH-SAA) to fly to destinations within
Honduras. By October 1945, SAHSA had also acquired a
Douglas DC-3 and a
Beechcraft Model 18. In 1953, SAHSA acquired rival airline
TACA de Honduras, by which time SAHSA was operating the Douglas DC-2, Douglas DC-3, and
Curtis C-46 Commando. Equipment with modern pressurised airliners began in the mid-1960s with the
Convair 340,
Convair 440 and
Douglas DC-6B being added to the fleet. The turboprop
Lockheed L-188 Electra joined the company in 1969. In 1970, Pan Am gave up its stake in SAHSA and TAN took over, but SAHSA continued to operate independently. TAN acquired the first jet airliner in Honduras, a
Boeing 737-200, in 1974, and started international operations between
Miami and Honduras. SAHSA acquired a Boeing 737-200 in October 1974 and later acquired
Boeing 727-200s. SAHSA began operations between
Costa Rica,
Nicaragua,
Belize and
New Orleans. The owner of TAN-SAHSA,
Oswaldo López Arellano, was a two-term president of Honduras. To keep business in Honduras, no U.S. airlines were given permission fly to or from Honduras. Once Arellano was thrown out of power, several U.S. based airlines, such as
Eastern Airlines,
Pan Am and
Air Florida, were allowed to operate to and from Honduras. SAHSA and TAN
merged into TAN-SAHSA on 1 November 1991. It was based at
Toncontín International Airport in
Tegucigalpa and flew from Honduras to various destinations throughout Central and North and South America. The TAN-SAHSA name was used between 1990 and 1991 when the name TAN disappeared. The airline continued to operate as SAHSA until its demise in 1994. The collapse was partly due to
corruption and partly to the airline's poor safety record. The airline experienced several accidents during its operational life, including a major crash of a 727 in 1989 in Honduras, killing 131 of 146 passengers aboard. Four years the airline had back to back incidents in two consecutive months in July and August of 1993. In the first, a 737 was seriously damaged in a hard landing in Managua, Nicaragua. Another incident then occurred the following month in August of 1993 when a Houston-bound 737 plane began to loose hydraulic fluid in flight requiring an emergency landing in
San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Due to the skillful actions of the pilots none of the passengers or crew were injured. A mechanic and parts were flown in from the capital and the aircraft was repaired on the tarmac that day, with the passengers reboarded and then continued the flight arriving in Houston that evening some 6 hours late. After this incident the airline lost its FAA Air Operations Certificate and with it its operating privileges to the United States. No longer able to fly to the United States, financial pressures caused the airline to cease flight operations in late 1993 and it was disbanded in January 1994. Following the collapse of SAHSA, Honduras had no national airline until 2002, when
Sol Air commenced operations. ==Destinations==