Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela Colombian airline, LANSA. Until TACA de Venezuela was completely absorbed by LAV in 1958, the route to Bogotá was flown using TACA aircraft in TACA livery. During the 1950s, LAV opened a transatlantic service and began flying to Panama (in 1953). The Constellation fleet was upgraded to L-1049G Super Constellations. An order for the first jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1, was placed, but with the Comet crashes of the 1950s, the airline never got their Comet jets. On 24 March 1956, LAV introduced its first turboprop, a Vickers Viscount 701 which was to replace the older piston engined
Vickers V-1000 on the overall project. Construction of the prototype was performed at Vickers' facility at Wisley Airfield, Surrey; flight trials would have also been based there. By November 1956, over £4 million had been spent on the V-1000 project; the first prototype had also reached 80 per cent completion. It had been estimated that the VC7 would have been in operational service as early as 1959, the same year in which the first V-1000s were projected to be delivered to the RAF. If it had entered commercial service as envisioned, it would have been the first turbofan-equipped airliner to serve long-haul