Stay Safe .....
If my memory is correct, they used to fly cargo out of MIami (70's)
I once saw one of their stratocruisers cross Lejeune Rd. eastbound ( toward the city) trailing about 100' of rope and a wheel chock. They were always overweight hence he was very low. The chock was almost bouncing off the cars. LOL
I think Ransa flew rubber dog sh^^ out of Miami to S. America.
Good grief, you too?
It was a spur-of-the-moment trip in 1992 to Central America that almost ended it for me and my wife. I booked TACA and our first stop was Guatemala City. We were flying a brand-new 737 and as we approached GC, we were flying over heavy overcast with only the tips of the local snow covered volcanoes visible. As we descended through the overcast, we emerged into a narrow, desolate, jungle shrouded canyon. It was like flying in a tunnel, because we were below the ridge line on both sides and the overcast hid the tops of the canyon. The pilot set 10º flaps and less than a minute later increased that to 15º flaps and lowered the landing gear. About the time he set 20º flaps I turned to my wife and said, "This damn canyon's getting narrower!"
It was about then that we heard the roar of engines suddenly brought to max power and the plane shaking violently as the pilot pulled the nose up sharply and raised the gear. As the plane banked right I could see what had panicked the pilot so; we were very near the end of a box canyon!
About 30 minutes later we were on the ground in GC. We were supposed to stay on board the flight, because our destination was San Salvador City, but I wanted to talk to the flight crew about that "missed approach" and since they exited the plane, so did I. I caught up with a pilot that had been dead-heading on that flight and at first he tried to deny that anything had gone wrong, but I was in no mood to be put off like that or lied to and he finally coughed up the excuse that the transmitters for the air navigation system located at the GC airport had gone off line and they had tried to dead reckon themselves through the clouds to the airport and instead found themselves in that box canyon. He said, at first they thought this was the canyon they usually see on final approach to the GC airport, but realized at the last second that they were in a dead end box. How they missed the numerous mountains in the area, as they climbed out blind through that overcast, I'll never know.
I've got about a million miles under my belt, mostly as a passenger, but also as a private pilot and I've been in some damn hairy situations. But in all that time that was the closest I've ever come to a landing I couldn't walk away from. I could hear in my head the voice of my dying father's last words to me: "What ever else you do Boot, don't fly non-scheds or foreign flag carriers" (he spent 40 years of his life as an engineer at United). Even dead, the ol' boy was still right. I'll walk before I fly TACA again!
Regards,
Boot Hill