TAF Linhas Aéreas
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TAF Linhas Aéreas was an airline based in
Fortaleza Fortaleza (, locally , Portuguese for ''Fortress'') is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. It belongs to the Metropolitan mesoregion of Fortaleza and microregion of Fortaleza. It is Brazil's 5th largest city and the t ...
, Brazil. It operated regional passenger and cargo services. Today, the owner continues to do Services with a ''TAF Taxi Aéreo'' or Taf Air Taxi, using some
Cessna 208 Caravan The Cessna 208 Caravan is a utility aircraft produced by Cessna. The project was commenced on November 20, 1981, and the prototype first flew on December 9, 1982. The production model was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA ...
to sporadic flights in interior of
Northeast The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...
of Brazil.


History

The airline was established and started operations as an air taxi company (Táxi Aéreo Fortaleza) in 1957 by pilot João Ariston Pessoa de Araújo, who was born in Cascavel. In 1992, TAF started operating night cargo flights for the Brazilian Postal Service between the cities of Recife, Fortaleza, João Pessoa, Natal, Juazeiro do Norte and Sobral, with a fleet of two
Cessna 208 Caravan The Cessna 208 Caravan is a utility aircraft produced by Cessna. The project was commenced on November 20, 1981, and the prototype first flew on December 9, 1982. The production model was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA ...
and two Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante. On 1 March 1995, it was officially proclaimed a regular airline, and on 17 March 1996 its name became TAF Linhas Aéreas S.A. In 1998, the company started operating flights on the route Juazeiro do Norte – Sobral – Iguatu. In 1999, competition from Nordeste and Varig forced it to cancel the routes it had by then established to Picos, Recife and Teresina. On 20 June 2000, TAF received a Boeing 737-248C, a version convertible between passenger and cargo configurations, joining a fleet that then consisted of 5 Cessna 208 and 4 Embraer 110. In 2001, it suspended its passenger flights for some time, concentrating its efforts again on postal cargo flights. Two of its Embraer 110 were then put out of service. In 2002, it received its second Boeing 737-200 to operate cargo flights on the Recife – Natal – São Luís – Teresina – BrasíliaRio de Janeiro route. This was the very same aircraft that had been in the dramatic " Landshut hijacking" episode while flying for
Lufthansa Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), commonly shortened to Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it is the second- largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is one of the five founding m ...
in 1977. Also in 2002, one Cessna 208 left the fleet. In 2003, TAF received another cargo Boeing 737-200 and started flying to Goiânia and São Paulo. In 2004, it received a Boeing 727-228 to operate further cargo flights. In the following year, it resumed regular passenger flights and started its first international route, to
Cayenne Cayenne (; ; gcr, Kayenn) is the capital city of French Guiana, an overseas region and Overseas department, department of France located in South America. The city stands on a former island at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the Atlantic Oc ...
, French Guiana, via Belém and Macapá. In September 2007, it started the weekend route Recife – Fortaleza – Belém –
Manaus Manaus () is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It is the seventh-largest city in Brazil, with an estimated 2020 population of 2,219,580 distributed over a land area of about . Located at the east center of the s ...
Aruba Aruba ( , , ), officially the Country of Aruba ( nl, Land Aruba; pap, Pais Aruba) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands physically located in the mid-south of the Caribbean Sea, about north of the Venezuela peninsula of ...
, on a Boeing 737-200. In September 2008, TAF stopped operating scheduled domestic passenger flights and in April 2009, international passenger flights. It then concentrated its efforts again on cargo and postal services. On 15 June 2010, the National Civil Aviation Agency of Brazil suspended the operational license of TAF and the airline was grounded. Finally, on 7 February 2013 its license was revoked. In 2010, only Táxi Aéreo Fortaleza continued to operate in the air taxi service. Today the company operates charters flights with small aircraft, including three helicopters, with contracts of the Civil House of the State Government of Ceará, Unimed Fortaleza and Legislative Assembly.


Destinations

TAF flew its Fortaleza - Belém - Macapá - Cayenne route until April 2009.


Fleet

It consisted of the following aircraft among several charter executive aircraft and helicopters :


See also

* List of defunct airlines of Brazil


References


External links


TAF Linhas Aéreas fleet
{{DEFAULTSORT:TAF Linhas Aereas Defunct airlines of Brazil Airlines established in 1995 Airlines disestablished in 2009