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 Viscount the Vickers Vanguard. The Vanguard drew extensively from the knowledge and design of the Viscount, and likewise maintained its advantage of lower operating costs over pure jet-powered aircraft, but its disadvantage in being slower than jet aircraft became increasingly critical as jets became more available over time. Regular passenger flights were launched by BEA in 18 April 1953, the world's first scheduled turboprop airline service. BEA became a large user of the Viscount, as well the rival Handley Page Dart Herald; by mid-1958 BEA's Viscount fleet had carried over 2.75 million passengers over 200,000 flight hours. Following BEA's launch of