Sur Air began operations on October the 29th 1996.

With the passing of the years and the evolution of Flight Simulation (FS) that allowed substantial texture improvements, the symbol and typography that has identified us has change as well.

           

  

 

I left Mexico City in 1989 after I was designated by Notimex as their journalist in Nicaragua.  After living for six years in Central America I came to Miami in June 1995.  While living in Costa Rica I bought my first PC (a powerful 386) where I discovered the Flight Simulator v5.0. I spend hours and days flying the Cessna and Learjet in every corner of the planet.  Ever since I got this passion, my wife and two children got resigned to our Sunday trip to the “Juan Santa Maria” airport, where we had some "ceviches" in a little eatery with excellent views to runway 07.

As I got to Miami I discovered the internet, and subscribed to AOL and Compuserve (do you remember them?) and that’s when I got to virtual Lynx Airways Airline, which worked only in AOL.  I flew with a white and black laptop and just with my keyboard, and that’s when I believe I developed my abilities to land the DC-9 from Air Italy (back then it was the only one with add-on in existence) with the little visibility that the screen allowed.

Well, after several months at the beginning of 1996, I started with Westwind, a virtual airline that worked with internet (Flight Simulator in the Americas) which was dedicated to the recollection of information, aircrafts, and sceneries of Latin America, I even designed the Guatemala, El Salvador, Tegucigalpa, Managua, San Jose and Panama airports since the FS5.0 did not included them.

I was amazed by the virtual airlines world, and was constantly trying to fly to Latin America with the few flights that the virtual Airlines had to the region. That’s when in mid 1996 I met Jorge Moreyra, a Cuban electrical engineer residing in Miami and great virtual aviation and air model enthusiast.  And it was after lots of long conversations, while we spend hours at Miami Airport right next to the 09R, watching with our binoculars airplanes take off and landing, that we decided that Latin America needed its own virtual airline, and we got into the task of making this happen.

Our original name SUR Air System, which after some years changed to SUR Air, had the intention to release the South as part of the world and as to pay homage to one of my adolescence idol , the Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti (“The South also exists”).

The Flight Simulation in The Americas was already very well known in Internet with connections with the most important sites like Flightsim.com. That’s how we got in contact with Fernando Berger, a Guatemalan who lived in San Jose, Costa Rica, and with argentine Salvador Alvarez.
In a historic conference in October 1996 via NetMeeting 1.0 (back then there were no chats or instant messages systems) we got Miami, Guatemala and Buenos Aires together.  In that conference SUR Air System was officially created, with our goal of starting operations on January 1997.

When we started operations the first of January 1997, our registered pilots were as follows:

I was nominated as SurAir’s President (CEO) and Mexico’s  HUB’s captain, with the task of building the strategic vision for the company, as well as its website. Jorge Moreyra was selected as Vice-President and HUB Miami’s Captain (SUR100x) and responsible for routes design. Fernando Berger was designated as Human Resources Director & Central America’s HUB Captain with base in San Jose (SUR300x), as well as being in charge of the entire airline graphic design, including the aircraft repaint. Salvador Alvarez on top of being the Buenos Aires Captain (SUR400x), he was the Operation Director, in charge of  creation of manuals, and the design of all the training programs.

Later on, with the on-line flights and the Vatsim organization boom, more brilliant pilots and great friends would incorporate the Mexico HUB, such as  Arturo “Baby” Rangel, Carlos Hernández, Casarín brothers (Francisco and Javier), Juan “Doc” Rico, Pablo Dávalos, Alberto Canedo, Alberto Bertrán, Enrique Rueda, Emilio “the Boss” Vásquez, Arturo Alvarez, Manuel “Manolo” Herrera, Daniel “Danny” Estrada, Mario Avila, Victor “ Captain Huachichil ” Mendoza, José Ignacio del Muro, the unforgettable Captain Mario Fonseca, Alfredo Elías and many more.

Then it came the glorious time of our participation in The Battle of the Airlines, where with the brilliant participation of Emilio Vásquez, Arturo Perez, Juan José García, Javier Casarín and Jorge Martínez, SUR Air took the first place in an international competition where hundreds of pilots participated.

In the last 10 years, flights simulation has advance in an astonishing way, nonetheless back in 1996 our fleet represented the most advance technology at our reach for FS95 (also known as FS6). As an example, we can appreciate here two screenshots of the time:

And now, after more of 10 years we can proudly say that SUR Air was the first virtual airline in Latin America and…



           We are still in the air!

ACROSS TIME WITH SUR AIR, UP TO THIS DAY…
by José Ignacio Del Muro Alarcón (SUR2015)

Every single HUB’s member greatly enjoyed doing our tasks and free flights. We had as a rule to respect rigorously our seniority rank, flying only the corresponding authorized airplanes, when we really had a big variety of the most proven and well demanded models at the time, each with its corresponding operation manual.
 
We jumped from Flight Simulator 95 to Flight Simulator 98, where we were astonished with what that technology could do for simulation and entertainment, we got modernized, and got some changes in our fleet textures.

We used to normally send our flight reports in “keyboard” style, in other words, manually and by emails. For that we had a special format to follow, and once it was sent, the staff would validate them and when the moment came, we took our theory-practice test in order to ascend to the next rank.

Everything continued with no changes but with lots of enthusiasm. Our particiapation was so active that we got the ATC Virtual Service radars jam-packed . We were very well known in the environment for been part of an Airline with a solid trajectory and great reputation, for been pilots with a big tendency to perfection, therefore, always very well respected.
 
Then another change came, we jumped from Flight Simulator 98 to Flight Simulator 2000. And if we were astonished with the first change, now we were more than amazed. And again, to stay on edge, our fleet got new textures. 
Then everything happened all over again, when we upgraded to Flight Simulator 2002.

The Staff Member’s contribute with their different abilities and the offering of their precious time to our dear Airline in order to provide all the pilots with all the needed resources, so we could be prepare for the constant and more and more demanding flight simulator requirements, in order to face new virtual airlines that were born practically every day across the globe.

During all this time, unforgettable personages, affectionate friends, and exceptional pilots marched past SUR Air roster.

A bad day, without any warning and in a date that now one would like to remember in 2003, SUR Air simply disappeared. All of the HUB’s were vanished from the huge net; SUR Air was erased  from navigators and search engines.  The www surair domain was lost….

Lots of us felt disappointed, and why not say it, without our “home” for many years.  But we were never defeated. We are still “flying”, as part of on line flights or alone or not connected and always wearing our SUR callsign registration.

Thanks to the initiative, determination and the invaluable assistance of José Emilio Vásquez, we achieve to have an alternative website, underground, were we could recover and obtain some of the old files, and some more recent ones so we could stay active, in contact and up to date.

Months and months passed and finally, Alfredo Elias Gandur Cano, was able to recover the www.surair.net website, and a new staff was established. Restarting our Airline activities in November 2005, resuming formal operations in January 2006 and again, as a consequence, our textures, symbol and typography had some changes.

During this new phase, Juan José García Chavarría and Víctor Alberto Mendoza Vargas have been, and still are, essential elements for our new site and domain’s operations.

We got back on air and some of our old pilots came back to the Airline. New members have been register, and we are in virtual radars again. We faced together the Airline 10th Anniversary, and since the new textures presented in the Boeing 737 were greatly accepted, we came to the decision to change the entire fleet’s textures, being the one we have at the moment in our Hangar. 

Now we have at hand many tools that turns out our passion into a real professional training. With the new versions of Flight Simulator, and freeware and payware add-on’s software, we get images and models that we couldn’t dream before, real meteorology, statistics systems, database, Pireps’ automatic systems, navigation systems, real sounds, and much more.

This site could not stay back from all the new technology advances, all the visual beauty and functionality that we can find in new web sites, and for that reason I dedicated a year to the mission of building up this site, the design, structure, and contents, and finally it was launched August 5th 2007.

The changes that were done to our database allowed us to create new FSPasssengers scenarios, and the new SUR Air 10th and SUR Express 10th Companies were developed, naming them as a commemorative for the Airline 10th Anniversary. This new Companies started operations on September 2007.

Later the creation of the new SUR Air Gold Company came, having its inauguration on September 9th 2007.

We have a profound affection for our Airline, and we think that is our duty to maintain it avant-garde, that’s why this new site will be constantly renew and up to date, so that all our active pilots, and the new ones to come, get at reach all the needed tools to bring again SUR AIR to an EXCELLENCE level.

This new site is Yours, consider it your home and be proud to belong to the most distinguished and respected Latin American Virtual Airline.

         


WE ARE IN THE AIR, WITH MORE THAN 10 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, AND WE ARE GOING FOR MORE!!!!