Copa Airlines (CM, Panamá City Tocumen International) has pushed back the planned retirement of its E190s by a few months due to the ongoing B737 MAX grounding, Chief Financial Officer Jose Montero revealed during a quarterly earnings call.
"It is now clear some of these important fleet transition events will slip into the latter part of 2021... So call it in the fourth quarter of 2021, whereas before, we had it leaving during the second quarter of 2021," Montero said.
The Panamanian carrier premised its original transition plan on the assumption that the B737 MAX would start flying during the first quarter of 2020. Copa has already removed the type from its schedule through the end of August 2020.
Copa Airlines launched the plan as a part of a broader strategy to reduce non-fuel-related cost-per-available-seat-mile (CASM) to under USD0.06. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the indicator reached USD0.069.
"The plan had four components to it. One was the exit of the E190 fleet. The second was a more dense configuration on the MAX, on a subset of the B737-9 aircraft that we're receiving. A third was a B737-800 densification program that we will start. And fourth, our overall savings initiatives. So out of those four initiatives, two of them are affected by the revised MAX schedule, which is the exit of the E190 fleet and the second MAX 9 configuration. I would say that the sub-USD0.06 plan will probably be in place by the end of the year," Montero explained.
The carrier currently operates fourteen E190ARs which are 12.9 years old on average, the ch-aviation fleets module shows. Copa has six grounded B737-9s and a further fifty-five B737 MAX on order from Boeing, including at least fifteen B737-10s.
