SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- At 4:40 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007, a new page will be written in El Salvador's history of commercial and tourism aviation. Flight LM 195, belonging to Italian company Livingston Air, will touch down at El Salvador's International Airport en route from Milan's Malpensa International Airport as the first flight linking Central America and Europe.

The Airbus A330-200, with a total of 297 seats between business and coach class, will transport the first group of passengers on the Milan-El Salvador- Milan inaugural route. After departing from Italy, the flight will stop in Cancun, Mexico, before arriving in El Salvador.

Starting Sunday, Oct. 21, and continuing every Sunday until the end of the year, the plane will land in El Salvador, remaining on the ground to refuel and board new passengers. At 5:55 p.m. of the same day, the plane will take off for Milan on a direct non-stop flight. Arrival time in Malpensa will be 12:10 p.m. local time on the following day.

The route, the first to connect El Salvador directly with Europe, will be the only one to operate between Central America and Italy. Customers will enjoy the advantage of not having to go through third-country customs and immigration checkpoints. It will eliminate the necessity for Central Americans to obtain visas, as Italy does not require them. The new route also does away with the obligatory checks at U.S. airports such as Miami, New York, Houston and other stopover cities.

The new route is the culmination of nearly a year of negotiations between Livingston Air, the Central American airline TACA and El Salvador's Tourism Ministry. By means of the agreement, signed earlier this year, TACA would transfer passengers arriving in El Salvador on Livingston Air to any of their destinations. "The idea is for these passengers to stay in our country longer," said Ruben Rochi, El Salvador's Minister of Tourism. "The new route," he added, "is helping us accomplish the strategy outlined in our 2014 National Tourism Plan - to increase the number of European tourists visiting our country."

CONTACT: Ana Beatriz Flores, Hill & Knowlton of Guatemala,
+011-502-24208390, fax, +011-502-24208391,
anabeatriz.flores@hillandknowlton.com, for MITUR & CORSATUR