SAETA Airlines
20th In A Series: A Fictional Ecuadorian Airline
SAETA (legally Sociedad Anónima Ecuatoriana de Transportes Aéreos S.A.), also referred to as SAETA Air Ecuador, is a privately held airline of Ecuador, headquartered on the grounds of José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport (GYE) in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The carrier also operates a secondary base at the Mariscal Sucre International Airport (UIO) located in the town of Tababela, near Quito, Ecuador.
Founded at Quito in 1962 as a state-owned airline known then as SAE Aero Ecuador, SAETA began operating in 1963 using second hand propeller airliners to service routes from Quito-UIO and Guayaquil-GYE to destinations within Ecuador. The carrier gradually began expanding to other cities across South America from 1965, and started using jet airliners from 1975. By 1980 SAETA had transitioned to an all-Boeing jet fleet and thereafter concentrated mainly on international routes.
The airline collapsed financially in 2000 as a result of the 1998-1999 Ecuador Economic Crisis. The carrier was revived by a group of private investors who relocated the company head office to Guayaquil-GYE, and reopened the airline in 2002 using a set of leased Airbus A320 series aircraft. Since then SAETA has generally operated at a profit using a type of low cost carrier (LCC) business model while flying an all-Airbus fleet.
History
1963-1975
SAE Aero Ecuador (legally known as Sociedad Aéreos Ecuatoriana S.A. and locally referred to simply as SAE) was first established on 14 February 1962 by the government of Ecuador, as part of a larger public works program to upgrade the transportation of people and goods throughout the country. Although private airlines had existed in Ecuador going back to the 1940s, nearly all of them operated international flights to nearby South American countries from either Quito-UIO or Guayaquil-GYE. SAE’s original mission was to serve foremost as a domestic carrier providing better air service to destinations within Ecuador.
SAE was originally placed under the oversight of the Ecuadorian Air Force (Spanish: Fuerza Aérea Ecuatoriana, or FAE), which valued the carrier as a source of income, as a way to move some military equipment around the country, and to create a mechanism to recruit and train a workforce of Ecuador-born pilots and other aviation personnel to serve in the military and civilian aviation sectors. SAE pilots were ranked as Air Force captains and majors while flight attendants - mostly men during those days - were ranked as non-commissioned officers.
With all this in mind, SAE began operations from Guayaquil-GYE on 7 January 1963 using a set of second hand Douglas DC-3 and Douglas-DC-6 prop airliners acquired from various US airlines, who at the time were themselves upgrading their respective fleets to jet aircraft. Half of the fleet was configured to function as freighters, while the rest served as passenger aircraft.
Initially SAE flew to the following destinations, all within Ecuador:
Cuenca-CUE
Esmeraldas-ESM
Guayaquil-GYE - 2nd Base
Loja-LOH
Macas-XMS
Quito-UIO - HQ and Main Base
San Cristóbal/Galapagos-SCY
In 1966, SAE Air Ecuador acquired four Vickers Viscount 700 turboprop aircraft from a British airline. With the Viscounts, SAE began flying to key international destinations such as Panama City-PTY, Santiago-SCL and Bogota-BOG. SAE also used the Viscount to operate weekly flights to Quito-UIO «» Cartagena-CTG «» Havana-HAV for a time, until that route was shut down during the early 1970s by the Ecuadorian Air Force.
1975-1980: Renaming to SAETA; Transition to All-Jet Fleet
In April 1975, the airline took delivery of four Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle IIIs - the company’s first jet aircraft. The Caravelles were acquired from the major French carrier Aviage Airlines, who in turn were busy upgrading their own fleet towards newer jets. In early 1976 SAETA sold off its Douglas DC-3 planes to a small cargo airline in Colombia.
In March 1980, the Ecuadorian civil government removed the airline from Air Force administration and reorganized it as a standalone but still state-owned entity. Although the company was formally renamed as SAETA (Sociedad Anónima Ecuatoriana de Transportes Aéreos S.A.), it continued using Aero Ecuador as a marketing brand name for the remainder of the 20th century.
(Note that in Ecuador the acronym SAETA was and is almost always pronounced Sah-eh-tah in both Spanish and English.)
In May 1980 SAETA acquired a single second hand Boeing 707-320B long range quadjet and a trio of mid-range Boeing 727-200 Advanced trijets. The company transferred its remaining Douglas DC-6 and Vickers Viscount prop aircraft - as well as most of the airline’s domestic route network - over to a new public-private domestic carrier, Aeroservicios Ecuatorianos (usually referred to as Aero Ecuatorianos or simply Ecuatorianos for short), thereby transforming SAETA into an all-jet airline. With the exception of the single domestic route between Guayaquil-GYE «» Quito-UIO, SAETA became an all international airline.
In a bid to further remove the company from its former military heritage, all newer aircraft were repainted using a new blue and white livery scheme. SAETA also replaced its former tail logo depicting a militaristic-styled condor - the Ecuadorian national bird - with a new, more stylized silhouette of a condor in flight.
The rest of the 1980s passed quietly for SAETA, but the 1990s were to become another matter.
1993: 707 Hull Loss Incident
On 13 August 1993, SAETA’s lone Boeing 707-320B suddenly became a hull loss when it experienced a very rough landing at Quito-UIO’s Old Mariscal Sucre International Airport. The landing gear partially collapsed under the weight of the aircraft and the airframe slid on its underside down the runway for over 700 m (2300 ft) before coming to rest near the opposing runway threshold area.
Fortunately there were only a few minor injuries to the flight’s passengers and crew, but the gear and underbelly of the plane were damaged beyond repair and could not be restored to service - or quickly removed from the airport’s only runway, for that matter. The airport remained closed for several days while authorities literally dragged the remains of the 707 off to one side, detached and set aside one of its wings, and then quickly repaired the runway so the airfield could reopen.
The Boeing 707 was already written off as a hull loss, and authorities planned to scrap the aircraft. But it was determined that in order to give salvage crews the necessary time to safely dismantle and remove the aircraft’s remains, the airport would have to close again for as long as 2 weeks. As a result, airport management kept putting off the plane’s removal year after year. In the end, the rusting airframe sat untouched alongside the threshold of Runway 17 for the next 20 years. It was finally razed in 2013 when the airport was permanently closed and replaced by a newer airfield of the same name located about 9 miles / 14.5 km away.
The loss of the Boeing 707 also created problems for SAETA specifically. The carrier had to drop its routes between Quito-UIO «» Los Angeles-LAX, Guayaquil-GYE «» Los Angeles-LAX, and Guayaquil-GYE «» New York-JFK, because those routes were no longer within range of the company’s remaining aircraft. The airline was able to reassign one of its Boeing 727-200 Advanced trijets to replace the now-defunct 707 along the Quito-UIO «» New York-JFK route, which was still within the range of the 727-200 Advanced, if only barely.
A few weeks later, the company came up with a workaround to reopen the Guayaquil-GYE «» New York-JFK route by leaving several seats in the center of the plane empty and blocked off, which would allow the aircraft to sufficiently extend its fuel range enough to reach New York-JFK safely.
1994: Boeing 720B to the Rescue; 737s Arrive
In order to replace the company’s now-wrecked 707, SAETA combed through the second hand aircraft market for weeks before locating a Boeing 720B quadjet that could theoretically replace the 707.
Sitting in storage at a boneyard in Spain, the 720B - a Boeing 707 derivative designed to make shorter flights from shorter runways - happened to be the final 720B aircraft ever built and was still in very serviceable condition. The boneyard was about to scrap the 720B when SAETA discovered it and offered to buy it out at a discount.
The plane was returned to flying condition and flown to a MRO facility in Louisiana, USA, where it was repainted and refitted for passenger service. The 27 year old aircraft finally arrived in Guayaquil-GYE on 17 March 1994 and was promptly put into revenue service flying the former 707 routes to New York-JFK and Los Angeles-LAX.
A few months later in June 1994 - 32 years after the company was founded - SAETA took delivery of its first ever brand new aircraft when the first of seven new Boeing 737-300 twinjets arrived from Seattle. Some were used to begin replacing the last of the company’s older Sud Aviation Caravelles, while the others replaced the Boeing 727s.
1998-1999 Ecuador Economic Crisis
Already one of the poorer countries in Latin America during the 20th century, during the late 1990s Ecuador began to experience severe capital flight that resulted in an acute political-economic crisis. Aggravated by several factors such as a military confrontation with Peru, hydroelectric energy production declines due to lower water levels, and agricultural productivity issues caused by the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, Ecuador became unstable enough to pass through four presidencies in only eight years.
In 1998 Ecuador’s economy began to fall apart and forced hundreds of businesses to suddenly go under. In early 1999 several of the country’s major banks began to fail and were forcibly taken over by the AGD (Agencia de Garantía de Depósitos). In September 1999 the Ecuadorian government itself began defaulting on its external debts, as it had to expend significant resources supporting the central bank and the AGD’s deposit guarantees.
By the end of 1999 Ecuador’s own currency, the Ecuadorian Sucre, had lost so much value it precipitated widespread informal use of U.S. dollars within the financial system. To prevent further hyperinflation, the government formally adopted the U.S. dollar beginning in early January 2000, which stabilized the economy but also resulted in great losses of wealth for many entities, including SAETA.
The government was barely able to to protect the smaller domestic carrier Aeroservicios Ecuatorianos from going under, but SAETA plunged into such an existential financial crisis that the government was forced to shut the company down on 13 March 2000. The government summarily laid off all of its employees and sold off the company’s entire fleet to help repay government debts.
2002: Reorganization and Restart
In early 2002, a group of private businessmen from multiple industries met in Quito with ministers of the Ecuador government to buy out the SAETA brand and its operating rights. The new company then recruited Guayaquil-born airline executive Antonio Avilés (b 1952) to serve as the new company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
Mr Avilés, who previously served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for the successful Panamanian airline Panavia for a decade, moved SAETA’s head offices and main operating base to Guayaquil-GYE and reorganized Quito-UIO to be the airline’s 2nd base.
He then leased a set of slightly-used Airbus A320-200s from a Canadian carrier to jumpstart the company’s operations from both airfields. Mr Avilés presided over the creation of a new livery for the carrier, and personally created the company’s colorful new logo, which featured a stylized letter E (for Ecuador) overlaying a stylized letter S (for SAETA).
After a two year hiatus, SAETA resumed operations on 3 May 2002, flying to the following destinations from Quito-UIO [ Route Map ] and Guayaquil-GYE [ Route Map ]:
Bogota-BOG, Colombia
Buenos Aires-EZE, Argentina
Guayaquil-GYE - HQ and Main Base
La Paz-LPB, Bolivia
Lima-LIM, Peru
Los Angeles-LAX, California USA
Mexico City-MEX, Mexico
Miami-MIA, Florida USA
New York-JFK, New York USA
Panama City-PTY, Panama
Quito-UIO, Ecuador - 2nd Base
Rio de Janeiro-GIG, Brazil
Santiago-SCL, Chile
In the years following the airline’s reopening, SAETA has continued to exclusively lease its Airbus A320s, and in time the company was able to acquire newer generation aircraft. By 2019 the SAETA took delivery of the newer generation Airbus A320neo with plans to retire its A320-200s in the early 2020s.
2020-2023: Covid 19
Ecuador was first struck by the Covid 19 Pandemic during February 2020. The pandemic and an accompanying drop in oil prices led to very severe economic problems throughout the country. SAETA responded with a mix of furloughs and early retirements, but for the most part was able to remain viable by using many of their aircraft as preighters (passenger aircraft repurposed as impromptu freighters) to carry essential cargo to and from Ecuador. The company also provided repatriation flights for Ecuadorians looking to return home.
Regardless, some routes had to be cut and the airline’s network shrank for a time, while some unused aircraft were placed into storage at an airfield in Arizona, USA to wait things out.
Today and the Future
With the Covid 19 pandemic finally receding, more recently SAETA has begun to regrow its route network, especially from Guayaquil-GYE, Ecuador’s economic capital.
The carrier is currently planning to add (or resume) service to several future destinations, including:
Aruba-AUA
Cali-CLO, Colombia
Chicago-ORD, Illinois USA
Curaçao-CUR
Havana-HAV, Cuba
Manta-MEC, Ecuador
Montego Bay-MBJ, Jamaica
Orlando-MCO, Florida USA
Santa Cruz-VVI, Bolivia
The last of SAETA’s Airbus A320-200s are expected to leave the fleet in early 2025, leaving the Airbus A320neo as the company’s only remaining aircraft type.
Discussions are currently underway about acquiring the A320neo’s larger capacity and longer range sibling, the Airbus A321neo and/or Airbus A321LR. The A321neos share flight crew interoperability with the A320neo and could be used to fly on busier routes, and possibly add more northerly destinations such as Toronto-YYZ, Vancouver-YVR and Seattle-SEA. So far SAETA has not placed any firm orders for the A321, however.
Antonio Avilés, now aged 72, continues to run SAETA as its CEO, but has announced plans to retire by the end of 2024. A new CEO has not been officially selected as of yet, but the company’s current COO, Eduardo Govea (b 1952) has been tipped by nearly everyone to be the selected successor. Mr Govea worked for the original version of SAETA back in the 1990s as a first officer flying the company’s Boeing 727s. He was then rehired in 2002 to fly Airbus A320s, and eventually entered the C suite in 2012 to become COO in 2020. Formal selection of the new CEO is expected soon.
Destinations
Current Destinations
Following is a list of destinations currently served by SAETA.
Buenos Aires-EZE, Argentina
Bogotá-BOG, Colombia
Cancún-CUN, Mexico
Cartagena-CTG, Colombia
Guayaquil-GYE, Ecuador - HQ and Main Base
Houston-IAH, Texas USA
La Paz-LAP, Bolivia
Lima-LIM, Peru
Los Angeles-LAX, California USA
Medellín-MDE, Colombia
Mexico City-MEX, Mexico
Miami-MIA, Florida USA
New York-JFK, New York USA
Punta Cana-PUJ, Dominican Republic
Quito-UIO, Ecuador - Secondary Base
Panama City-PTY, Panama
Rio de Janeiro-GIG, Brazil
Santiago-SCL, Chile
San Jose-SJO, Costa Rica
São Paulo-GRU, Brazil
Former Destinations
Following is a list of destinations previously served by SAETA.
Asunción-ASU, Paraguay
Cali-CLO, Bolivia
Caracas-CCS, Venezuela
Cochabamba-CBB, Bolivia
Cuenca-CUE, Ecuador
Esmeraldas-ESM, Ecuador
Havana-HAV, Cuba
Loja-LOH, Ecuador
Macas-XMS, Ecuador
Manaus-MAO, Brazil
Manta-MEC, Ecuador
San Cristóbal/Galapagos-SCY, Ecuador
Santa Cruz-VVI, Bolivia
Santo Domingo-SDQ, Dominican Republic
Fleet
Current Fleet
Following is a list of aircraft types currently used by SAETA.
Airbus A320-200 - 2002-Present - Retiring 2025
Airbus A320neo - 2019-Present
Former Fleet
Following is a list of aircraft types previously used by SAETA, listed in order of the year they entered the SAETA fleet.
† = JStream original aircraft
Douglas DC-3 - 1963-1976 †
Douglas DC-6 - 1963-1980 †
Vickers Viscount - 1966-1980 †
Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle - 1975-1994 †
Boeing 707-320B - 1980-1993
Boeing 727-200 Advanced - 1980-2000
Boeing 720B - 1993-2000 †
Boeing 737-300 - 1994-2000
=Nota Bene=
SAETA Airlines (JStream’s version) is a fictional Ecuadorian airline of course, but it is loosely based on the histories of 3 former real life but now-defunct Ecuadorian carriers: The real-life SAETA (existed 1966-2000), plus TAME (1962-2020) and SAN Ecuador (1964-1999).
SAETA, TAME and SAN Ecuador all share some similarities in terms of the fleets they once used, all being founded in the 1960s, and all three closing down during local economic crises. (TAME lived longer but the Covid 19 pandemic’s economic impacts ultimately took it down in the end.)
Real life TAME really was owned by the Ecuadorian Air Force in real life, while real-life SAETA (as far as I know) was always privately owned. For the fictional version of SAETA, I split the difference and had it be a government owned entity at first, then go belly up in 2000, then be revived as a private company in 2002.
I used SAETA instead of TAME or SAN Ecuador as the name for this fictional carrier for no particular reason. I do have to admit I liked the look of SAETA better than TAME, which of course in English can mean subdue or domesticate, so that might have tipped the scales in favor of using SAETA.
There are 5 original-content aircraft templates featured in this article: Douglas DC-3, Douglas DC-6, Vickers Viscount, Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle and Boeing 720B are all original aircraft templates hand-crafted by Yours Truly. I like the whole litter, but I especially love how the Sud Aviation Caravelle turned out.
I plan to write a separate article at a later date about Aeroservicios Ecuatorianos, the domestic airline that was spun off from the fictional SAETA in 1980.
In real life, life is really hard for airlines in Ecuador. There are over two dozen defunct Ecuadorian airlines listed on Wikipedia, and only three active scheduled airlines as of this writing: Aeroregional, a small, Ecuadorian-owned carrier flying 4 aging 737s on mostly domestic routes; and then there are two foreign-controlled airlines, Avianca Ecuador (whose parent company is Colombian) and LATAM Ecuador (whose parent company is Chilean). Ecuador is thus very dependent on foreign airlines to connect with the outside world.
All liveries depicted in this article were conceived and drawn by the Author.
The Boeing 720B, Douglas DC-3, Douglas DC-6, Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle and Vickers Viscount aircraft templates are all original, in-house made content created by the Author.
All other aircraft templates shown in this article are licensed from Norebbo and augmented by the Author for display. Blank side view templates of these aircraft are available for purchase through ShopNorebbo.
Route Maps were created using Great Circle Map.