In Mexican films of the 1970s, every character seemed to fly Aeroméxico
For a stretch of the 1970s, if a character in a Mexican movie needed to catch a plane, it was almost always an Aeroméxico jet on screen. That steady cameo helped turn the state-run carrier into a household name, decades after it began with a single small Stinson monoplane flying from Mexico City to Acapulco.
Antonio Díaz Lombardo founded the airline as Aeronaves de México in September 1934, and pilot Julio Zinser flew its first trip to Acapulco. Pan Am soon owned 40 percent and helped modernise the fleet with DC-2s and Boeing 247s. Service to New York's Idlewild began in 1958 with Bristol Britannia turboprops, the route proved lucrative, and the government nationalised the company the following year. Its first jets, a pair of DC-8s, arrived from 1961.
In 1970 the state folded the domestic airlines into one system run by Aeronaves, and in February 1972 the name was shortened to Aeroméxico, along with a new orange and black paint scheme. It was a launch customer for both the DC-10-30 and the MD-82, the stretched version of the DC-9.
The good times did not last. In April 1988, with an ageing fleet averaging 20 years and a troubled state administration, the airline was declared bankrupt and grounded for three months. It was relaunched and privatised under the name Aerovías de México. The 1990s brought a domestic fare war, the peso crisis of December 1994 that forced cancelled routes and returned aircraft, and a state holding company created in 1996 to keep Aeroméxico and Mexicana afloat.
Aeroméxico co-founded the SkyTeam alliance on 22 June 2000 with Air France, Delta and Korean Air. From 2006 it flew to Japan via Tijuana using Boeing 777s, becoming the third Latin American airline with regular service to Asia. Banamex bought it at auction in 2007 for 249.1 million dollars, and Delta has since built up a stake and a joint venture on routes between Mexico and the United States.
Source: Aeroméxico
