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.
[6][7] 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.
[16][17] 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.
[18] Chalk did not lack for ambition: in 1961 alone he had TCA bid for Northeast Airlines[19] and asked the CAB to serve New York to a number of Midwest cities.
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.
In May 1967, the CAB gave TCA authority to fly from Dulles International Airport (IAD) outside Washington, DC.
But TCA started with near daily service at IAD, cut that in half, and then reduced it to a single weekly operation.
The strong community of interest between New York City and Puerto Rico supported JFK-SJU flights, but there was nothing similar for other routes.
TCA lost increasing amounts of money from 1966 onward, with a huge $11.1mm loss in 1969 (over $94mm in 2024 dollars) on transport revenues of $46mm.
Transit was in growing financial trouble with Chalk accused on the floor of the US Senate (among other places) of having milked it[30] (the bus lines would be forcibly purchased by the new Washington Metro in 1973).
For this reason, a portion of American's purchase price was placed in escrow when the deal closed to be released only if these issues were favorably solved.
[33] Robert J. Serling's book on American Airlines portrays O. Roy Chalk in a dubious light, discussing him of having falsified merger-related information.
[36] TCA had day-of-week and black-out pricing: timetables show that its lowest fares were available on during the week, in the middle of the night and not available during holiday periods.
[41] The Pan Am and TCA routes laid the foundation for continued Caribbean growth by American, culminating in the 1986 establishment of a San Juan hub.
But American ultimately found it hard to compete against growing nonstop service to Caribbean islands (versus connecting in San Juan).
And in 2017, American finally threw in the towel on the New York to San Juan route it inherited from TCA.
TCA system timetable dated July 7, 1969 shows service to the following destinations:[43] The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was the US Federal agency that approved Trans Caribbean's merger with American.
