Transbrasil was born in the State of Santa Catarina as a sister company of S/A Indústria e Comércio Concórdia, better known by its acronym Sadia.

In 1954 Sadia acquired its own Douglas DC-3 and started daily flights to São Paulo–Congonhas Airport, having Omar as one of its crew members.

In order to avoid this restriction, on January 5, 1955 Omar Fontana founded Sadia S/A – Transportes Aéreos with 35 employees, 3 Douglas DC-3s and 2 Curtiss C-46s.

At this time Sadia moved its headquarters to São Paulo and expanded services to Rio de Janeiro–Santos Dumont and Porto Alegre.

[7] In 1968 Sadia joined the shuttle service (Portuguese: Ponte Aérea, meaning "air bridge") between Rio de Janeiro-Santos Dumont and São Paulo-Congonhas airports, operated since 1959 by Varig, Cruzeiro do Sul and VASP.

The first jet airliner type to be introduced into the fleet of Sadia, a stretched BAC One-Eleven Series 500, entered into service on September 17, 1970.

In addition to domestic flights to most of the larger Brazilian cities, Transbrasil offered regular and charter service to Miami, Orlando, New York, Washington, Buenos Aires, Vienna, Amsterdam, London and even Beijing.

During some time, due to discounted ticket prices and an aggressive commercial strategy Transbrasil surpassed VASP as the second largest Brazilian airline.

However, soon Fontana started to disagree with the Brazilian Air Force officers nominated to run the company and in 1989 the intervention was cancelled.

[citation needed] In addition to the management problems, Transbrasil was also facing other difficulties, specially the reduced or no profit from its international routes, severe competition from other companies in the domestic front (specially TAM, a former air taxi company with a growing fleet) and growing expenses.