Aerosucre

When spotters in recent years asked about a Boeing 727 in real cargo service, one name came up almost every time: Aerosucre. The Colombian cargo airline flew the 1960s three-engine jet longer than almost anyone else – over Bogotá, along the edges of the Amazon and as far as the Caribbean. Since the end of 2025, that era is over. What remains is a small fleet of old Boeing 737 freighters and an airline that is a genuine supply line for many regions of Colombia. Here you’ll learn how to place Aerosucre, what is left of the 727 story and how to recognize the aircraft today.

Aerosucre at a glance

Aerosucre is a pure cargo airline from Colombia. Its headquarters and hub are at El Dorado Airport in Bogotá. The airline describes itself as the cargo airline with the longest tradition in the country, and that fits: It was founded in 1969 in the country’s Caribbean region, where operations began with small Piper aircraft. The name suggests the department of Sucre in northern Colombia.

The small air taxi became a cargo airline step by step. By the mid-1970s, the focus was already clearly on freight, and the first destinations were the Caribbean island of San Andrés as well as Aruba and Curaçao. After that, the fleet grew with aircraft that would almost all belong in a museum today: Curtiss C-46s, Douglas DC-4s and DC-6s, two Handley Page Heralds and, from 1982, jets of the Sud Aviation Caravelle type. From the 1990s, the Boeing 727 took the lead role.

Today Aerosucre flies Boeing 737 freighters domestically and to destinations in the Caribbean, Venezuela and Ecuador. The airline does not belong to an alliance – which would also be unusual in a cargo business of this size.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code A4: appears in cargo documents and flight schedules. For spotters it plays a smaller role than at passenger airlines.
• ICAO code KRE: this is the code you see on flight trackers. A KRE before the flight number means: Aerosucre is flying here.
• Callsign AEROSUCRE: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio, for example with approach control in Bogotá.

The ICAO code KRE has no obvious connection to the name – that is true of many airlines, because obvious letter combinations were often already taken. How to read tracker data correctly and also find cargo flights without a flight number is explained in the guide to flight tracking for spotters.

The 727 era: Aerosucre as one of the last operators

For spotters, Aerosucre is above all one thing: the airline of the Boeing 727. According to fleet overviews, Aerosucre flew the Boeing 727-200 from 1991 and the shorter Boeing 727-100 from 1992, both as freighters. In total, seven 727-200s and two 727-100s were used.

What made this special: The 727 had long been in retreat worldwide by that time. The big airlines in Europe and North America had retired the three-engine jet by the early 2000s at the latest, and the last scheduled 727 passenger flight ended in 2019 in Iran. In Colombia, though, 727 freighters kept flying – at Aerosucre and also at the cargo airline LAS Líneas Aéreas Suramericanas. For years, Bogotá was thus one of the few places where you could still regularly photograph a 727 in everyday scheduled service.

The end of the 727

The 727-100s disappeared from the fleet as early as 2015. The 727-200Fs lasted longer, but in 2025 Aerosucre sped up the retirement. HK-5216 set the final point: As early as November 2024, this 727-200F had clipped an instrument landing system antenna array on takeoff in Bogotá and returned safely after about an hour. In December 2025, the same aircraft turned back on a flight from Barranquilla to Bogotá because of a problem with the left main landing gear. On landing in Barranquilla, the left main gear collapsed, and the left wing hit the runway and was substantially damaged. Since then, the common fleet overviews list no 727s at Aerosucre.

For you, that means: Photos of Aerosucre 727s are historical documents today. If you have such pictures in your archive, it’s worth recording them cleanly with registration and date – they are among the subjects that will never come back. How to judge how special a sighting is is shown in the article How rare is my sighting?.

Today’s fleet: Boeing 737 Classics as freighters

After saying goodbye to the 727, the fleet consists of Boeing 737s of the so-called Classic generation, that is 737-300s and 737-400s, which were converted to freighters after their passenger careers. The numbers differ slightly depending on the source: Aerosucre itself cites six aircraft but lists five; current fleet overviews arrive at five to six aircraft. The average age is well over 30 years.

The Boeing 737-400SF and its smaller sister are popular conversion freighters worldwide: The aircraft are cheap to get, robust and cope with shorter runways. That is exactly what Aerosucre needs for destinations like Mitú or Puerto Carreño. You’ll find the matching type pages under Boeing 737-300 and Boeing 737-200, and everything about the manufacturer at Boeing.

For identification, the registration counts most: On a photo with a legible HK registration, every aircraft can be unambiguously assigned to the airline.

How to recognize Aerosucre

With freighters, the livery helps you less than with passenger airlines. The most important features lie in the aircraft itself and in the data.

737 Classic or 737-200?

You’ll find more on telling freighters apart in general in the guide Identifying cargo aircraft. If you’re curious how old a particular aircraft is, Finding out an aircraft’s age will help – at Aerosucre, figures beyond 35 years quickly come up.

The network: from the Amazon to the Caribbean

Aerosucre flies to where roads are missing or long detours are needed. A large part of Colombia in the east and south is hard to reach by land. Food, building materials and everyday goods therefore often come by air.

• Hub: Bogotá El Dorado (BOG)
• Larger cities domestically: Barranquilla, Medellín, Cali
• Remote regions: Leticia on the Amazon, Mitú, Inírida, Puerto Carreño
• Caribbean: the island of San Andrés; formerly also Aruba and Curaçao
• International from Bogotá: according to Aerosucre, scheduled cargo to Caracas and Quito; further destinations in Venezuela, Panama and Central America appear in schedules and charters

During the COVID pandemic in 2020, Aerosucre also transported medical supplies within Colombia. As with many small cargo airlines, the network changes often – what’s on the schedule today may be a charter tomorrow and vice versa.

In Colombian air traffic, Aerosucre is one of several cargo specialists. The largest is Avianca Cargo with Airbus A330 freighters that carry cut flowers to North America and Europe. For passengers to remote regions, the state-owned Satena is responsible, serving some of the same places. And the network carrier Avianca shapes passenger traffic in Bogotá.

Safety record: not a chapter to look away from

Aerosucre’s history also includes several serious accidents. Precisely because the airline operated for decades with old aircraft at difficult airfields, the record is mixed.

• 1989: A Caravelle crashed after takeoff in Barranquilla after poorly secured cargo shifted; there were fatalities on the ground as well. In the same year, a Handley Page Herald hit a mountain in bad weather.
• 2006: A 727 clipped an antenna on approach to Leticia in poor visibility and crashed; the five people on board died. In the same year, another 727 was written off after a landing gear failure in Bogotá.
• 2016: On Flight 157, a 727-200F crashed shortly after takeoff in Puerto Carreño. According to the Colombian investigation report, the takeoff roll was significantly lengthened by a rotation speed calculated too high, tailwind and a rotation that was too slow; the aircraft was also probably slightly overloaded. Five of the six occupants died.
• 2021: On a 737-200, the cargo door opened after takeoff in Mitú; the crew returned safely.
• 2024 and 2025: the two incidents involving 727 HK-5216, with no injuries.

Authorities have repeatedly cited Aerosucre for overloading in the past. For you as a spotter, that means: Photos and videos of heavy takeoffs on short runways circulate plentifully online – assess them with some distance and keep in mind that many of them relate to the 727 era.

Common mix-ups

• Still expecting Aerosucre with the 727 – since the end of 2025, the airline no longer flies any 727s.
• Confusing Aerosucre with LAS – LAS Líneas Aéreas Suramericanas also flew 727 freighters from Bogotá. The ICAO code and registration provide clarity.
• Equating the 737-400 and 737-300 – the -400 is visibly longer and carries more cargo.
• Taking every windowless 737 for a 737-800BCF – at Aerosucre they are older Classic models. Both generations have flattened engines; clearer are the shorter fuselage and the type code B733 or B734 instead of B738 on the tracker.
• Searching for the IATA code A4 on the tracker – it usually says KRE there.

Aerosucre and the Latin American cargo scene

Aerosucre stands for a kind of aviation that has long survived in Latin America: small cargo airlines that supply whole regions with used jets from North America and Europe. Many of these aircraft had already had a long life at major airlines before. You’ll find similar operators in Miami, where for example Amerijet International flies cargo to the Caribbean and Latin America. A look at Plane spotting in Miami is worthwhile if this scene interests you.

If you like vintage types, you’re most likely to get your money’s worth at such airlines – even though the very old types have by now disappeared almost everywhere. The guide Spotting vintage aircraft in the sky gives you an overview of how to identify older models reliably.

Conclusion

Aerosucre is a small airline with a big spotter history. For three decades it was one of the last addresses for the Boeing 727 in everyday cargo service – until HK-5216 was badly damaged in a landing at Barranquilla in December 2025. Today Aerosucre flies old Boeing 737 Classics from Bogotá to Colombia’s remote regions, to the Caribbean island of San Andrés and to a few neighboring countries. If you want to get the airline in your viewfinder, you have to go to Colombia – and should note registration and type carefully.