IBERIA: A bit of history
Founded in June 1927 by Horacio Echevarrieta and Lufthansa during Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, Iberia (IATA:IB and ICAO:IBE) with its main base at Adolfo Suarez Madrid Barajas Airport, is one of the oldest airlines in the world and the main regular airline in Spain. Although the first flight of Iberia was planned to be a flight from Madrid to Barcelona, for different reasons the first flight of Iberia was a flight from Barcelona to Madrid in December 1927. Since then, Iberia has not stopped growing to become one of the best traditional airlines in the world and the leading airline for connections between Europe and Latin America.
Iberia became the first airline to fly from Europe to South America when on 22 September 1946 it began operating flights from Madrid to Buenos Aires, with stops in Villa Cisneros, Natal and Rio de Janeiro. A few years later, in 1954, Iberia announced flights from Madrid to New York, although still without jet aircraft as these would become part of the Iberia fleet in the second half of 1961 when three Douglas DC-8s were added for long-distance flights.
The current company is called Iberia Líneas Aéreas de España, S. A. and is a private sector company that is part of the IAG Group (International Airlines Group) along with British Airways, Vueling & Aer Lingus (LEVEL, the other commercial airline of the IAG Group, went bankrupt in June 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic) and the Iberia subsidiaries, Iberia Regional Air Nostrum and Iberia Express. In recent years, Iberia has carried out one of the greatest transformations in its entire history to become a profitable, more modern, dynamic and efficient company.
Together with its OneWorld alliance partners, Iberia offers more than 8,500 flights a day to anywhere in the world. These flights can be booked through its website and are available on the Sebogo flight comparison engine under the name Iberia.
As a curious fact, we can say that until 1939, when it made its first international flight from Madrid to Lisbon, Iberia was an airline that operated only in Spain. London and Paris were the next international destinations until Iberia was nationalized in 1944 and became part of the INI or Instituto Nacional de Industria.