I remember the company as "Challenge International Airlines." They were obviously trying to capitalize on the acronym. I flew on Challenge a few times.
This brings to mind some other, rather dark CENTAM airline humor:
The Honduran airline was SAHSA "Servicio Aereo Hondureno Sociedad Anonima." The joke was that SAHSA really stood for "Stay At Home, Stay Alive!"
The Salvadoran Airline was TACA "Transportes Aereos Centro Americanos." The joke as that it stood for "Take A Chance Airline!" or "Tantos Accidentes Como Aviones" ("As Many Accidents as Airplanes!")
The approach to Tegucigalpa's Toncontin Airport was really hazardous. The airport was at the bottom of a big geographic bowl, so the plane on final approach was skimming along quite close to the hills as it descended. They used to have a traffic light on the major road that went around the end of the airstrip -- the idea was to stop traffic when a plane was about to land. Often the buses ignored the light -- a few times some poor guys riding on the roofs of the buses were struck by aircraft landing gear and killed.
One day I was standing outside the Toncontin terminal with the Chief of the Embassy office of an important USG agency. We were there to greet a delegation of very senior officials from that agency who were arriving in a Lear jet. As we watched the jet bob and weave as it went along the hills on that treacherous final approach, the chief turned to me and said, "A lot of head room if that thing piles in." It was a dark time. There was a lot of dark humor.
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