Trans Caribbean Airways

Trans Caribbean Airways (TCA) was an irregular air carrier (United States charter airline) until 1957, when it was certificated by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) as an international air carrier to fly from New York City to San Juan, Puerto Rico. TCA thereafter operated as a small scheduled airline specializing in flying from New York (and later Washington, DC) to the Caribbean, adding a small number of additional routes over time until it was purchased by American Airlines in 1971.

TCA was founded and, for its entire existence controlled, by businessman O. Roy Chalk.

TCA was known for:

TCA was originally organized under the name "Trans Caribbean Air Cargo Lines, Inc.", which continued to be its legal name through 1952, when it became "Trans Caribbean Airways, Inc.". However, the name "Trans Caribbean Airways" was in use as early as 1946. In 1959 TCA once again changed its legal name, this time to "Transportation Corporation of America dba Trans Caribbean Airways" until 1964, when it reverted to "Trans Caribbean Airways, Inc.".

TCA was organized May 18, 1945, acquired two C-47s in June and started operations in December, initially between Miami, New York, Havana and other Caribbean and Latin American points. TCA acquired Douglas DC-4s in April 1946, with DC-4 operations starting in August. The company went public in April 1946 (99,000 shares at $3/share, or about $4.8mm in gross proceeds in 2024 dollars). TCA did well as an irregular carrier, its CAB application for Puerto Rico service noting a history of profitability and of significant charter service to San Juan. For these reasons, Trans Caribbean was selected over United States Overseas Airlines, a significantly larger supplemental airline of the time. However, the airline also functioned as a vehicle for Roy Chalk's wider ambitions. In 1956, Chalk bought D.C. Transit, the pre-Washington Metro Washington, DC streetcar/bus service, and did so through TCA. In 1959, TCA owned 85% of the stock of D.C. Transit.

At the time of its 1957 CAB scheduled certificate award, TCA's fleet comprised four DC-4s, a DC-6 and two C-46s, with four more DC-6s on order. TCA's certification was the result of a CAB case adding a new carrier to the New York to San Juan route where the CAB atypically sought to add a carrier (to the two carriers already present – Eastern and Pan Am) that would concentrate on low-priced travel. At the time, Puerto Rican migration to the US mainland was a big deal and New York City was the singular focus of this migration, with 70% of all stateside-Puerto Ricans resident in New York City in 1960 (and even higher levels earlier). The CAB saw low fares between New York City and Puerto Rico as essential for the further development of Puerto Rico and to allow Puerto Rican migrants to the mainland US to easily visit their homeland and with that in mind, certified TCA for an initial period of five years on New York, NY/Newark, NJ-San Juan. The Puerto Rico case therefore was remarkable in having as its results (i) that a supplemental air carrier achieved the status of being a certificated carrier (the only time this ever happened) and (ii) where the CAB explicitly sought to reduce fares.

TCA was initially successful as a certificated carrier, starting San Juan (SJU, the airport then known as Isla Verde, today's Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport) scheduled service from then Idlewild Airport, today's New York JFK Airport (JFK) in New York in March 1958. In 1960, the CAB gave it approval to extend the San Juan flight to Aruba (AUA). In December 1961 it introduced jet service to San Juan with DC-8-50s. It was also successful in suppressing fares – in 1960, Pan Am and Eastern complained of losing $1.7mm and $1mm respectively on New York-San Juan, a year in which TCA broke even on the route. Chalk did not lack for ambition: in 1961 alone he had TCA bid for Northeast Airlines and asked the CAB to serve New York to a number of Midwest cities.

The CAB did not formally review TCA's certification until September 1966, when it granted TCA permanent authority, viewing it as having made a success of the route. TCA's typical market share of New York-San Juan was about 25%, though lower in 1966 because it was left short of life after Eastern torched a TCA DC-8 while performing heavy maintenance on it in Miami in November 1965. New York-San Juan expanded from being the 11th largest domestic route to the 6th largest by passengers. 1965 passengers on the route were over 2.5 times those of 1955, far above the increase in overall domestic traffic in the same period. This was driven by a dramatic shift in passengers traveling on "thrift" fares, an early form of discount air fare, not generally available elsewhere. In 1958, substantially fewer than 50% of passengers used such fares on New York-San Juan, but by the last 12 months of data available to the CAB at the time (YE Sep 30 1964), almost 92% of all passengers (and 98% of TCA passengers) were using such fares, an early look at the stimulative effect of low-fares in a longer-haul scheduled market (as opposed to the short-haul markets of Pacific Southwest Airlines in California in the same timeframe or Southwest Airlines in Texas in the 1970s). This was well before Laker Airways' Skytrain in 1977. Fares were as low as $45 (over $450 in 2024 dollars) and the CAB noted the route had some of the lowest yields (revenue per passenger per mile) in the world. Yet TCA continued to make money.