Spantax

Spantax was the name of a Spanish airline that operated from 1959 to 1988. Its headquarters were located in Madrid and its hub was at Gran Canaria Airport and Palma de Mallorca Airport. Majorca.

History

Beginnings

It was founded on October 6, 1959 as Spanish Air Taxi and the acronym Spantax by Rodolfo Bay Wright, emblematic pilot of the Iberia airline and Marta Estades Sáez, flight attendant of the same company. It first operated taxi-type flights air with small British planes like the Auster transporting personnel and material to oil prospecting in the Spanish Sahara. With the first profits they acquired larger aircraft such as the Douglas DC-3 with which they continued to carry out transport to the Spanish Sahara and also flights transporting tourists in the Canary Islands and since 1962 in the Balearic Islands.

Expansion and heyday

In 1962 the company obtained permission to operate charter flights (Inclusive Tour in the jargon) to different points in Europe. The DC-3s were joined by other Douglas aircraft such as the DC-4, DC-6 and DC-7. In 1966, it was already transporting almost 700,000 passengers a year and continued to expand. In 1967 it acquired one of the best existing passenger jets, the Convair 990 Coronado, very fast although with high kerosene consumption, receiving the first in February of that year, followed by another 13 received until 1975 and which were transformed to operate. to the passenger limit with 149 seats. He lost two in accidents in 1970 at Malaga Airport and 1972 at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, and a third was miraculously saved, after colliding in flight with an Iberia McDonnell Douglas DC-9 in southwest France on the 5th. March 1973, due to a strike by French air traffic controllers.

Spantax reached its peak when it began scheduling transatlantic flights, which caused its fleet to expand first with the DC-8 (1973) and then with the DC-10 (1978), becoming 70 in the second largest European charter company, transporting 2 million passengers annually.

Crisis and disappearance

With the oil crisis of 1979, Spantax began to suffer financial difficulties, which would worsen after the accident of flight 995, when its DC-10 EC-DEG crashed on takeoff from Malaga airport in September 1982, resulting in his death. 53 people.

It desperately tried to rejuvenate its fleet, first with DC-9, later with Boeing 737-200 and in its last months of life with MD-83 and was retiring the obsolete and uneconomical Convair 990 Coronado.

In 1987, financial difficulties forced Spantax to hand over to a financial group located in Luxembourg under the promise that they would inject capital to clean up the airline. This was not the case, so the attempts to renew and refinance the service and the negotiations for the additional expansion of the fleet with Boeing 767-200 went to waste, in such a way that Spantax stopped operating on March 29, 1988, presenting Bankruptcy file followed, although for a year there was talk that it was going to operate again with the help of people like José María Ruiz-Mateos, but this possibility did not come to fruition.

In November 1988, former Formula 1 driver Niki Lauda bought 20% of Spantax to try to revive the company with the Nordic countries market, but it was not possible due to its short fleet of aircraft.

Accidents

The company suffered three serious accidents:

• 3 December 1972 with Spantax 275 flight in which its 155 occupants died at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife.
• March 5, 1973 near Nantes in France, where a Spantax plane operated the BX400 flight and an Iberia plane operating the IB504 flight crashed into the air.
• 13 September 1982 with flight 995 where 50 occupants died in Malaga Airport.

Legacy and conservation

Eleven Convair 990 Coronado languished for years at the Palma de Mallorca airport, until they were scrapped between 1991 and 1997, while the one registered EC-BZO was abandoned at the Son San Juan Air Base after the bankruptcy of the company. Since 2009, the Amics de Son Sant Joan association, through its website, tried to achieve its restoration and static display through the collaboration of citizens, as well as the Island Council of Mallorca in session plenary session on December 21, 2011 agreed to declare the aircraft as a Cataloged Property of the Historical Heritage of the Balearic Islands, being the first time that this has happened in Spain. On March 26, 2018, it confirmed and ratified maintaining the aircraft as a Cataloged Property of the Historical Heritage of the Balearic Islands in addition to starting studies for the rehabilitation of the plane and locating a suitable place for its exhibition.

The Infante de Orleans Foundation maintains a Beechcraft B-18 aircraft in flight that was acquired by Spantax in May 1962, registered as EC-ASJ. That aircraft was finally sold by Spantax seven years later, in 1969.

This plane can be seen in flight during the exhibitions that the Infante de Orleans Foundation holds periodically at the Madrid-Cuatro Vientos Airport.

Historical fleet