BlondeBomber - Unfortunately, ALTA didn't last very long. I actually thought they were going to make it, as their business model mad a lot of sense. It's not that they flew to places the established carriers (LAN, Ladeco and Avant) didn't, but that they had better point to point connections amongst the second tier cities, and permitted bypassing the obligatory SCL connection on trips from northern to southern Chile.
I think what did them in was that they couldn't compete (profitably) with their probably higher unit costs. Domestic airfares in Chile has come down significantly in price in the last two years, to the point that more than 30% of inter-regional bus capacity (the standard means of transport) has been taken off-line.

This is really off-topic, but it seems that several of us would enjoy a forum on FT to discuss the economics of air transport.