Copa Airlines has been growing quickly since the pandemic downturn ended, thanks in part to a prudently timed expansion of its internal aircraft maintenance capabilities.
The Panama-based airline opened a new, three-bay heavy airframe hangar in 2019 with an eye on adding flexibility and cost savings to its operation. The pandemic’s ramifications quickly added a dimension, however—the ability to transition parked aircraft to revenue service-ready conditions without relying on outside providers.
“MRO capacity has been a real issue,” SVP of operations Daniel Gunn said during Copa’s recent investor day. “Part of our ability to grow back to the size we are today as quickly as we [have] was thanks to us having this capacity in Panama to bring our aircraft out of the desert very quickly and put them back into service.”
Copa is using two lines for heavy checks on its own aircraft and the third for special projects, such as cabin refurbishments. Gunn said Copa has done 88 c-checks on its all-Boeing 737 fleet since the facility opened. Plans call for the facility to handle all 22 Copa C-checks scheduled for 2023.
“What this does is it allows us to be more flexible, and also has significantly reduced costs related to providing heavy maintenance for our aircraft,” Gunn said. “We continue to ... expand and/or build shop capability. We do the business case, and if it makes sense for Copa to pull it in, we do it. If it doesn’t, we have no pride of ownership.”
Gunn says doing heavy check work internally has cut labor costs 14-30% compared to sending the same work out to providers in the region while helping the airline avoid some of the macro supply-chain issues hampering most carriers. The effort, which has included a focus on boosting shop-floor efficiency through new digital tools, is part of the reason Copa is targeting year-over-year capacity jump of about 12% this year, despite having to shuffle its fleet plans due to 737 MAX delivery delays.
“Our tech ops team has really muscled through it extraordinarily well,” Gunn said.
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