Boliviana de Aviación

Catching a BoA aircraft in Europe is no everyday sighting. The Bolivian state airline regularly serves only one European destination – Madrid – and does so with just three Airbus A330-200s. If you spot at Barajas, you should have it on your list. And if you are interested in South America, BoA offers a colorful mix of three Boeing 737 generations, regional jets and airports at extreme elevation. This page shows you what is behind the airline and how to recognize its aircraft.

Boliviana de Aviación at a glance

Boliviana de Aviación, BoA for short, is Bolivia’s state-owned airline. It was founded on October 24, 2007, by government decree, and the company is wholly owned by the Bolivian state. Its headquarters is Cochabamba in the center of the country. At the end of March 2009, BoA began scheduled service – with two Boeing 737-300s on the routes between La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

The background: the long-established Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano, for decades Bolivia’s national airline, had fallen into a deep crisis in the mid-2000s and ceased operations. BoA is not a renaming of that company but a new state foundation that filled the gap. Within a few years, BoA became the country’s largest airline.

After that, things moved quickly: in 2010 the first international destinations followed, including Buenos Aires and São Paulo. At the end of 2012, Madrid became the first destination outside the Americas, and in 2014 the connection to Miami followed – if you spot there, you will find tips under Plane spotting in Miami. In the same year, BoA became a full member of IATA.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code OB: appears in the flight number, so on the departure board, boarding pass and in most timetables.
• ICAO code BOV: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and shows up in the callsign on flight trackers.
• Callsign BOLIVIANA: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

The IATA code OB has no recognizable connection to the name – that is common with IATA codes, because many letter combinations are long taken. The ICAO code BOV, by contrast, is easier to remember. Why there are two code systems at all is explained in the article IATA and ICAO codes explained; you will find the difference between flight number and radio callsign under Callsign and flight number.

Hubs at three very different elevations

BoA spreads its traffic across three major airports that could hardly be more different geographically. That shapes flight operations, too.

Airport	Code	Elevation above sea level	Role at BoA
Cochabamba Jorge Wilstermann	CBB / SLCB	around 2,550 m	Company headquarters and most important hub
Santa Cruz Viru Viru	VVI / SLVR	around 370 m	Gateway to long-haul: Madrid and Miami
La Paz El Alto	LPB / SLLP	around 4,060 m	Seat of government, flights to South America’s west coast

El Alto is the outlier: the airport above La Paz is one of the highest commercial airports in the world. In the thin air, aircraft need more ground speed to lift off, and the engines deliver less thrust – the takeoff roll becomes correspondingly long. The main runway is therefore around 4,000 meters long. For crews, operating there is routine with special rules, for spotters a place with a dramatic backdrop of the Altiplano and Andean peaks.

Viru Viru near Santa Cruz, by contrast, lies in the tropical lowlands, only a few hundred meters above sea level. That is one reason the long-haul route to Europe starts here: a heavily loaded A330 gets airborne in the lowlands with full range, without payload having to be sacrificed.

The fleet: Boeing 737 domestically, A330 on long-haul

BoA’s fleet is manageable but varied for spotters. As of 2026, the airline operates these types:

Type	Use	Spotter note
Airbus A330-200	Long-haul, including Madrid and Miami	Only widebody type, cabin with business and economy
Boeing 737-800	Domestic and regional routes	Longest 737 in the fleet, two overwing exits per side
Boeing 737-700	Domestic and regional routes	Shorter Next Generation, one exit per side
Boeing 737-300	Domestic	Classic generation, the type BoA started with in 2009
Bombardier CRJ200	Smaller domestic destinations	Regional jet with rear-mounted engines, back in service in 2024

On long-haul the situation is clear: BoA operates three A330-200s. For the narrowbody fleet we deliberately give no exact numbers – the figures differ depending on the source and the cutoff date, and BoA has repeatedly added and removed aircraft in recent years.

From the 767 to the A330

On long-haul, BoA has an eventful history. The airline opened the Madrid flight at the end of 2012 with a leased Airbus A330-200. After that it flew with Boeing 767 widebody jets: briefly with a rented 767-200ER, and from 2014 with Boeing 767-300ERs. The 767s shaped the image of BoA in Madrid and Miami for around a decade.

In 2022, BoA signed lease agreements for Airbus A330-200s, and the first examples arrived in 2023. They replaced the 767-300ERs, which left the fleet by around 2024. The manufacturer of today’s long-haul type is Airbus. If you have a BoA 767 from Madrid in your archive, you now own a historic subject. How to tell the 767 from its smaller sister is shown in the article How to tell the Boeing 757 and 767 apart.

Three 737 generations in one fleet

For 737 fans, BoA is a small textbook. The airline flies the 737-300 of the Classic generation and alongside it the 737-700 and 737-800 of the Next Generation. All three come from Boeing but differ in the details.

A detailed guide with all the features can be found in the article How to tell Boeing 737 generations apart. The Bombardier CRJ200 is easy to separate from them: it carries its two engines at the rear and has a T-tail. The manufacturer is Bombardier.

How to recognize BoA

BoA aircraft carry the airline’s name legibly on the fuselage – often in the short form “BoA” with a lowercase “o,” which has become the trademark. For a reliable identification the livery alone is not enough, though, because leased aircraft and new arrivals can look different. The registration is more reliable.

Bolivian registrations are unusual: the country prefix CP- is followed not by a combination of letters but by a four-digit number. The BoA A330s, for example, carry registrations like CP-3208, CP-3209 or CP-3214. If you see a numeric registration with CP- on the tail in Madrid, the matter is practically settled. How registrations are built in general is explained in the article Understanding aircraft registrations.

Spotting BoA in Madrid

For spotters from Germany, Madrid-Barajas is the realistic place to see BoA. According to airport operator Aena, the airline uses Terminal 4 there and connects Madrid with Santa Cruz Viru Viru; depending on the schedule, connections to Cochabamba are also linked. That puts the BoA A330 alongside Iberia, which uses T4 as its home base, and numerous other Latin America flights.

On the route to Bolivia, BoA also has competition: Air Europa also flies from Madrid to Santa Cruz. At Barajas, however, Air Europa does not use T4 but T1 and T2. That is practical for you, because in one day you can collect several South America connections at Barajas. You can judge how rare such a sighting is with the article Assessing the rarity of a sighting. You will find information about the airport on the page for Madrid-Barajas Airport, a popular photo location is described in La Muñoza at Madrid-Barajas Airport, and an overview of the spotting options is given by the Madrid guide.

BoA in the South American landscape

In South America, BoA is one of several state-owned and flag carriers that exist alongside large private groups. The most important competitor on the continent is the LATAM group, plus network airlines like Avianca and Aerolíneas Argentinas. Buenos Aires has been among BoA’s international destinations since 2010, as has São Paulo; further connections lead to neighboring countries like Chile, Peru and Paraguay. Exactly which routes are on the schedule fluctuates – BoA keeps adjusting its network.

BoA does not belong to an alliance. Instead, the airline relies on individual codeshare and interline partnerships through which passengers can book connecting flights.

Common mix-ups

• Treating BoA as the same as Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano – LAB is the historic predecessor as national airline, BoA an independent new foundation from 2007.
• Taking OB for an abbreviation of “Bolivia” – the IATA code is a pure airline identifier with no connection to the name.
• Taking every widebody jet with a CP- registration for a 767 – since the switch to the A330-200, BoA no longer flies any 767s.
• Confusing the 737-700 and 737-300 – both have one emergency exit per side, but engines and wingspan reveal the generation.
• Looking for BoA at the wrong terminal at Barajas – the airline is handled at Terminal 4.

Conclusion

Boliviana de Aviación is a young state airline with a surprisingly versatile fleet. In Europe it regularly shows up only in Madrid – with the A330-200, which replaced the 767. In South America it flies three generations of the Boeing 737 and operates from airports ranging from the lowlands to a good 4,000 meters of elevation. If you note down the CP- numeric registration, you have a sighting that is hardly everyday in any European collection.