Copa Airlines (CM, Panamá City Tocumen International) has deferred the launch of its nascent Panamanian LCC, La Nueva Aerolínea, S.A. t/a Wingo (Panama), to the second quarter of 2020, CEO Pedro Heilbron said during a quarterly earnings call.
"Wingo's sister airline, which will be based in Panama and was originally scheduled for late 2019, has now been postponed to Q2 2020 due to the MAX grounding," he said.
Panama-based Copa owns production carrier Copa Airlines Colombia which its LCC brand Wingo (Colombia) uses. In its home market, Copa only operates as a full-service airline.
While neither of the Wingo units is scheduled to operate B737 MAX aircraft in the near future, Copa Airlines itself has six grounded B737-9s and a further fifty-five B737 MAX on order from Boeing, including fifteen B737-10s and forty undisclosed variants. As such, the airline has had to defer plans to transfer aircraft to Wingo as it needs them on its own network.
Wingo currently has four B737-700s operated by Copa Airlines Colombia, the ch-aviation fleets module shows. It plans to start upgauging the fleet to B737-800s during the fourth quarter of this year.
Copa Airlines currently operates ten B737-700s, sixty-eight -800s, and twelve E190s. Its Colombian subsidiary operates seven B737-700s (including four units operated for Wingo and three for Copa) and four E190s (all wet-leased to the parent airline).
