Lineas Aéreas Postales Españolas

LAPE
Líneas Aéreas Postales Españolas

LAPE Caudron C.448 Goéland
IATA ICAO Callsign — — LAPE
Founded	1932 (1932)
Ceased operations	April 1, 1939 (1939-04-01)
Operating bases	Madrid-Barajas Barcelona El Prat
Focus cities	Madrid Barcelona Sevilla Palma de Mallorca Valencia Tenerife Las Palmas
Destinations	Santander, Toulouse
Parent company	Govt. of the Spanish Republic (55%)
Headquarters	Madrid,  Spain

LAPE, Spanish Postal Airlines (Líneas Aéreas Postales Españolas), was the Spanish national airline during the Second Spanish Republic.

LAPE, often also spelt L.A.P.E. and colloquially known as "Las LAPE", replaced CLASSA (Compañía de Líneas Aéreas Subvencionadas), the company that had been the Spanish national airline during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, an airline that was still reeling from the Great Depression. LAPE became established in April 1932, CLASSA flying under the Spanish Republican Flag for one year. The republican government of Spain compensated CLASSA's shareholders and established postal contracts in order to make the new airline viable. The first Douglas DC-2, part of the modernization of the fleet inherited from CLASSA, arrived in Madrid-Barajas in March 1935.

In 1932 and 1933 LAPE's air service was restricted to the Madrid-Sevilla and Madrid-Barcelona lines. In March 1934 flights to the Canary Islands were restarted and a few months later in September the line Madrid-Valencia was inaugurated. In 1935 the lines Barcelona-Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona-Valencia and Valencia-Palma de Mallorca were operated, although with interruptions. By June 1936 the company's Canary Islands line included an air service between Las Palmas and Tenerife.

The Spanish Republican Airline operated even during the Spanish Civil War in an intermittent and increasingly haphazard manner. Although a great part of the planes of its fleet were requisitioned by the Spanish Republican Air Force and used as military transports, LAPE kept operating in the Republican zones of Spain with its base in Madrid-Barajas. The Madrid-Barcelona line was functioning and it was extended to Toulouse. There was also a flight Madrid-Santander until mid-1937 when Santander fell into Nationalist hands that was flying in a wide roundabout in order to avoid the fronts. Whenever the air battles over Madrid became too difficult to handle for the LAPE pilots, the Madrid-Barcelona line was replaced by Barcelona-Albacete.