Sadia Transportes Aereos

  5 January 1955 to 1972

  Brazil

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TYPE: Airline

IATA/ICAO CODES: -- / ---

HEADQUARTERS: Concordia, Brazil (1955-1957), Sao Paulo, Brazil (1957-1972)

FORMER NAME: Nil

SUBSEQUENT NAME: Transbrasil (name change)

Sadia Transportes Aereos was born in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina as a sister company of meat business SA Industria e Comercio Concordia, better known by its acronym Sadia. In 1953, Omar Fontana, one of the sons of the founder of Sadia, came up with the idea of leasing aircraft for transporting the products of Sadia to Sao Paulo. After occasionally leasing an idle DC3 in 1953 to start up the service, Sadia acquired its own DC3 in 1954 and flights became daily with Omar as one of the crew members. However, since it was not an airline with regular schedule, it could not receive subventions from the government. In order to avoid this restriction, Omar created Sadia Transportes Aereos on 5 January 1955 and started scheduled flights on 16 March 1956.

Sadia enlarged Concordia airport so that a DC3s could operate from there with full loads, and he created the first route from Concordia to Videira, Florianopolis and Sao Paulo Congonhas. A short time later, Sadia was also operating to Londrina, Bauru, Ribeirao Preto and Brasília.

In November 1957, Sadia established a partnership with Real Transportes Aereos and became a feeder airline at Florianopolis. Whereas Real's CEO Linneu Gomes got 50% of the shares of Sadia, Omar Fontana became part of the board of Real, where he gained airline experience. At this time Sadia moved its headquarters to Sao Paulo and expanded its services to Rio de Janeiro Santos Dumont and Porto Alegre. This partnership ended in 1961 with the demise of Real and its purchase by VARIG. Fontana bought back the shares he had earlier sold to Gomes.

In 1962, Sadia bought TAS (Transportes Aereos Salvador) and increased its presence in Bahia. In 1967 most of Sadia network was eligible to receive subventions from the Federal government and aiming at those subventions Sadia bought five Handley Page Dart Heralds. In 1968, it joined the shuttle service between Rio de Janeiro Santos Dumont and Sao Paulo Congonhas, operated since 1959 by VARIG, Cruzeiro do Sul and VASP.

With the purchase of its first jets in 1970, Sadia soon rebranded into Transbrasil in 1972 and its headquarters were moved to Brasília.

1956 to 1967

Sadia operated 3 Commandos.

• Curtiss C-46A-41-CU Commando: PP-ASL
• Curtiss C-46A-45-CU Commando: PP-LEE / PP-ASM
• Curtiss C-46A-60-CK Commando: PP-SLK