The absence of a continuing locally based carrier certainly didn't help. And trying to get several non-local airlines together to co-ordinate something like this proved just too difficult. Local traffic is mainly US-originating holiday traffic, so low yield, and very 'peaky'. Demand is also capped by available hotel space. We thought there would be enough N-S demand (and Latin America is still a fast growing region in terms of air travel), but that on its own just wasn't enough to build that hub. It seems that efforts are continuing though to build Latin American traffic

I think the opportunity for a major hub is limited over there - for all the above reasons - except for maybe niche hubs - ie connecting cities that otherwise would have no real service - gets a higher yield. That's more or less what Copa is doing very sucessfully.

Of course the one airport that used to have a lot of transit traffic, lost it all, and then re-invented itself as World Central "where the World connects", needed a very strong home carrier to be built up, local demand boosted to the hilt, and billions of dollars of investment.

Oh - and no bad memories - I spend some lovely time there with very friendly people - some of whom I still see occasionally on a work-related basis.

PS - BB is standard work issue - but the most useful function on it is the automatic switch off ^