At the dawn of commercial aviation in Colombia, airport construction was delegated to airlines wishing to serve that particular city. Thus, the construction of major airports in Colombia mainly fell to SCADTA, among these being Soledad International Airport. Soledad Airport soon became the main center of operations and maintenance of SCADTA for their domestic operations. International services were operated by Pan American Airways, which maintained scheduled DC-3 service, later supplemented by Boeing 307 Stratoliners, to Panama City, Kingston, and Miami. In 1946, international service at Soledad Airport resumed with Avianca DC-4s, first to Miami and later to Kingston and New York. British South American Airways also began operating to Barranquilla 1946, using Lancastrians to provide a once-weekly flight to London via Bermuda. The service took 26 hours and was referred to as "The Lightning Route to Europe". Also that year, a number of special flights with DC-4 aircraft were operated from Barranquilla to Miami and New York under contract with the airline Transocean Airlines. KLM (Department of the West Indies) began operating in Barranquilla with DC-4 aircraft, giving passengers the opportunity to connect with scheduled flights to Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Trinidad. In the early fifties LANSA inaugurated a service from Barranquilla to Havana, but never won permission to fly to Miami. However, in the sixties, TAXADER established a service to Miami, but only for a few months. Soledad Airport soon established itself as the premier international airport in Colombia and the first hub in the country. In the mid-50s, Avianca built one of the most important aviation maintenance shops in Latin America at the airport, two large hangars that were built to house several aircraft at once. There were workshops for propellers, hydraulics, tools, electro-mechanical systems, and metal rolling. The maintenance facility also included a painting workshop, a warehouse of spare parts, and a technical school. The workshop was certified by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) of the United States for the repair and overhaul of all types of domestic and foreign aircraft. Also, in the early 1950s, a unique system was built for loading and unloading passengers and cargo from DC-4s that drastically reduced the time required by a claimed 50%. With this system, the DC-4 taxied to where it was in a certain spot and then electric carts on rails that were flush with the runway surface moved the aircraft sideways to the unloading gangways. With the opening of the El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá in December 1959, Soledad was relegated to secondary importance in the country. It was only upon the delivery of the first Boeing 727 to Avianca in 1966 that the runway was extended. However, in order to appropriately handle modern jet airliners, and the resulting increase in passenger traffic, there became a need to build a new international airport with a more modern terminal, more stands, and larger runways and taxiways. There was hope that this project would put Barranquilla back on the map as an airport served by major international carriers. Finally, on the afternoon of April 7, 1981, Julio Cesar Turbay, president of the Republic, and Alvaro Uribe Velez, Chief of the Aeronáutica Civil dedicated Barranquilla's new international airport Ernesto Cortissoz. The new terminal, with an area of 35,000 square meters, along with its new control tower, apron, taxiways, and runway (now 3,000 meters long by 45m wide), were built north of the old Soledad Airport. The design was by architect Aníbal González Moreno-Ripoll and the new terminal was built by the firm Paredes, Fuentes, y Vasquez Ltda. The new terminal had seven domestic gates and four international gates each with its own waiting area. The premises of the former terminal building became the cargo area. Formerly, the company Caribbean Airports S. A.