Copa Airlines (CM, Panamá City Tocumen International) is considering either retiring or selling all fourteen of its B737-700s as it eyes a more streamlined fleet in the post-COVID recovery period, Copa Holdings' chief executive said during the group's 1Q20 earnings call.
"We are now evaluating the retirement or sale of our 14 B737-700s. When we restart flights, we intend to focus our operations on a simple fleet consisting exclusively of B737-800s and B737-9s," Pedro Heilbron said.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, the fourteen -700s are 17.9 years old on average, which makes them the oldest type in Copa's fleet. The ch-aviation fleets ownership module shows that Copa owns twelve of these Boeing narrowbodies while the remaining two are dry-leased from GECAS.
Heilbron added that Copa was continuing with the sale of fourteen E190s, announced last year.
"We are assuming that the fourteen E190s are disposed of. We already announced that last year, and that was already in the plan. There could be other fleet moves that we have going forward just simply to match where we have the demand at a particular moment," Chief Financial Officer Jose Montero added.
Besides the B737-700s and E190s, Copa Airlines currently operates sixty-four B737-800s and six grounded B737 MAX 9s. It has a further fifty-five B737 MAX on order from Boeing. Its subsidiary Copa Airlines Colombia (P5, Bogotá) operates an additional four B737-800s on behalf of low-cost virtual carrier Wingo (Colombia) (Bogotá).
Heilbron added that the airline, which has consistently shied away from adding widebodies and has been using the B737s for its medium-haul operations, will use the two remaining types for different purposes.
"We're going to have the B737-800s with a simple unified configuration for, let's say, medium to short hauls. And then we'll have a MAX9 configuration with lie-flat seats for longer haul flights," he clarified.
