[3] On February 2, 1928, American pilot Charles Lindbergh flew to San Juan on his Spirit of St. Louis airplane, as part of a goodwill tour through the Americas.
He arrived from St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands and took off on February 4 on a flight to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Aerovías Nacionales' airplane was not able to perform its duty and Felix Juan Serrallés Sanchez (1911-1985), who took off from Mercedita Airport in Ponce, won the race for the Powelson Airlines.
Shortly after the end of that war, in 1945, the air station, since known as Isla Grande airport, started getting used by other commercial airlines.
Airlines such as Deutsche Luft Hansa, Iberia and Delta flew to Isla Grande airport.
Isla Grande airport handled propeller-driven aircraft that were in use during the 1930s and 1940s, but it was not prepared to receive jet aircraft such as the Boeing 707 that would become the staple of the fleets of many airlines worldwide in the up-coming years, so the Puerto Rican government began construction of a new airport, to be located in Isla Verde, a Carolina area near Carolina's city border with San Juan.
to land from North, Central and South America, Europe and other Caribbean countries in Puerto Rico, and thus, subsequently, additional airlines like Aerolineas Argentinas and KLM started services to the island.
During the early 1990s, a group of enthusiasts dedicated themselves to find one of Delta Airlines's five original DC-3s to restore it to flying conditions and found one, Delta Ship 41, (the airline's second DC-3) in Puerto Rico flying for Diaz Aviation (under the name Air Puerto Rico).