TACA International Airlines, S.A. / Lineas Aereas Costarricenses S.A. / AVIATECA S.A. / Nicaraguense de Aviacion, S.A. / TACA de Honduras S.A. de C.V. / Trans American Airlines, S.A.

Order 04-10-05
OST-04-17355 - Registration of Trade Name

Issued and Served October 13, 2004

Order to Show Cause

On March 17, 2004, the six Central American carriers captioned above, filed a joint application in this Docket asking approval to register for their collective use the trade name "TACA" and use the designator code "TA" for all of their services to/from the United States. By this order, we have tentatively decided to grant the TACA Group an exemption, to the extent necessary and subject to conditions, for them to proceed as proposed, for a period of one year.

While the TACA Group request may appear to be one of first impression, the issue of common branding is something that we have long recognized might be of interest to certain associated carriers. Indeed, we have expressly referred to the common branding possibility in a number of our orders, (Order 2002-1-6 at page 7) specifically signaling carriers wishing to take advantage of this approach that they would need to seek our authority to do so. This is in fact what the TACA Group has done.

We note that the TACA Group states its intention to comply with the consumer-disclosure provisions of Part 257. We tentatively find, however, that the nature of the TACA Group proposal requires a still higher degree of consumer notice and protection. In that connection, we tentatively have decided to condition the authority with the notice and disclosure provisions that the Group delineated in its application.

By: Karan Bhatia