HISTORY GUEST AVIACO perishables , and carrying passengers on domestic routes , complementing — but not competing with — Iberia , which was very wary of this new company .
On May 1 , 1948 , two Bristol 170 MK . 21s arrived in Madrid and , on August 8 , Aviaco started service from Madrid to Bilbao and from Bilbao to Barcelona . That year , four more Bristols arrived , and Aviaco put them to work transporting up to 4,000kg ( 8,800lb ) of fruit from Zaragoza , Valencia , and Murcia to Bordeaux , London , and Brussels . Flights carrying up to 44 passengers or mixed passenger-cargo loads were operated on the Madrid-Barcelona , Barcelona- Palma , Madrid-Sevilla-Las Palmas-Tenerife , Bilbao- Zaragoza , Santiago-Bilbao-Barcelona routes , and various cities in North Africa ( Algiers , Oran , Tetouan ) and France ( Bordeaux , Marseille ) were also served .
Aviaco even operated a very profitable route to the Spanish colony of Guinea , transporting equipment and passengers and bringing back products that were scarce in Spain ( pineapples , avocados , lobsters ). In 1950 , the company joined IATA and continued to expand , opening flights to Jerez , La Coruña , and
1 For a quarter of a century , the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 was a faithful workhorse for Aviaco . // CARLOS SALAZAR
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