I was just wondering, will copa airlines ever enter the longhaul market? If so , what destinations would it serve?

The only theoretical reason would be to parallel the ME3 strategy being the connecting point btwn US/Europe and Asia/India, so what would that be for Copa? Connect places like LIM & SCL to Europe? I don't think there is enough demand and obviously not near the O&D traffic in PTY vs DXB.

At 7+ hours duration, some of COPA's flights qualify as long haul, except they are flown between points in the Americas and with a 737. That being said, the only continent where, on paper, such an expansion would make sense is Asia, leveraging the PTY hub, But that expansion makes less sense when one considers the sheer length of a hypothetical PTY-PVG or PTY-PEK. While GRU, EZE and SCL would make good feeding points for such flights, is there enough premium demand to justify such an operation? A huge part of CM's success is the 737. Why complicate the golden eggs goose with another type, not needed for the Americas?

Europe is extremely well connected to Argentina & Brazil with dozens of daily flights to both countries. What would CM bring to the table?

dcajet wrote:

At 7+ hours duration, some of COPA's flights qualify as long haul, except they are flown between points in the Americas and with a 737. That being said, the only continent where, on paper, such an expansion would make sense is Asia, leveraging the PTY hub, But that expansion makes less sense when one considers the sheer length of a hypothetical PTY-PVG or PTY-PEK. While GRU, EZE and SCL would make good feeding points for such flights, is there enough premium demand to justify such an operation? A huge part of CM's success is the 737. Why complicate the golden eggs goose with another type, not needed for the Americas?

Europe is extremely well connected to Argentina & Brazil with dozens of daily flights to both countries. What would CM bring to the table?

Panama would be a great hub for Europe, GRU and EZE are great for the other end of Latin America and well served. In north Latin America there is nothing between Bogota and Mexico City. CCS is next to dead. Havana is for Cuba. Copa needs to leverage what they have created since the 737 MAX has taken then as far as they can go with it.

PTY and a 787-9 should have as many or more European flights as Avianca has in BOG and AV's hub is smaller. Tokyo, Taipei and Seoul would be stage 2, if AeroMexico can do it so can Copa. Copa found new intra-American routes with the 737 now its times to do the same east and west over the Atlantic and Pacific and eventually Sydney, Australia. I want to see Copa's flag on top the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Not too sound contrarian, but I don't think you will see COPA's flag (is there such a thing?) flying over Sydney, All CM would be doing is agglutinating low yielding demand from points in Central and Northern South America. Is there any meaningful and sustainable high yielding demand from places there to Australia to make such an ULH possible?

The reason GRU, EZE and MEX are so well connected with the rest of the world is that they serve global alpha cities with a good mix of high yielding demand. Absent that, not sure such flights can become a profitable proposition over time.

B737MAX is good, but to order Boeing transatlantic long-haul ETOPS w/ extra fuel-tanks version so CM keeps its fleet commonality and could add MAD, BCN, AGP, SCQ, TFS/LPA, LIS, FNC, LON, MAN, DUB, CMN.. to its network sounds surreal. Those routes would be roughly between 9:15 and 11:15 flying time with a "cozy" cabin configuration of probably less than 120 passengers!
The major markets in Northern South America already do have good connections to Europe, specially to MAD; so if talking about CM to Europe (within B737MAX extra fuel tanks range), CM strategy would have to be either frequency or to include major secondary markets, most likely not served from Northern South America.

jfk777 wrote:

Panama would be a great hub for Europe, GRU and EZE are great for the other end of Latin America and well served. In north Latin America there is nothing between Bogota and Mexico City. CCS is next to dead. Havana is for Cuba. Copa needs to leverage what they have created since the 737 MAX has taken then as far as they can go with it.

PTY and a 787-9 should have as many or more European flights as Avianca has in BOG and AV's hub is smaller. Tokyo, Taipei and Seoul would be stage 2, if AeroMexico can do it so can Copa. Copa found new intra-American routes with the 737 now its times to do the same east and west over the Atlantic and Pacific and eventually Sydney, Australia. I want to see Copa's flag on top the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

PTY-NRT is as long as SFO-SIN, is there even enough premium and connecting traffic to justify this kind of ULH flight? PTY-SYD is almost as long as PER-LHR.

As for PTY-Europe, there's too much overlap with BOG. PTY is too east to have any meaningful advantages. SCL/LIM-BOG-Europe is shorter than SCL/LIM-PTY-Europe. As for Central American cities, SAL/TGU-MIA-MAD is shorter than SAL/TGU-PTY-MAD; though one can argue about the unnecessary hassles of connecting in the US. In addition to all that, you already have most European carriers with non-stop to many of these destinations.

CM and PTY are doing a good job connecting north-south traffic, but their location for intercontinental traffic isn't that advantageous.

I will say no, because anywhere they might consider flying already has a good connection to Europe. From PTY, one can get to AMS, CDG, FRA, MAD, and IST to Europe, and to Asia, one can use Aeromexico to NRT, ICN, or PVG (Copa codeshares with all of the airlines going to those destinations except future entrant Air Europa). Sometimes, it's wise to just be a regional airline, as the MAX 9 (which are 3-class planes) can reach any major destination in North America from PTY. The only thing I would say is that maybe CM should defer some of the MAX 9s to get the 3605-nmi version (PTY-YVR, a theoretical longest route, is 3255 nmi). A route like PTY-YVR would likely need the last row blocked, to legally dispatch (the advertised range is 3510 nmi at 178 passengers) with YXX as the filed alternate.

Chile, Argentina and Brazil are well connected to North America. Yet, Copa has thrived in the market. I can see PTY-MAD aggregating traffic from all of Latin America to be served several times per day. And Copa serving a Star Alliance hub in Europe to distribute passengers to other cities. A 787-9 with a high density configuration is probably what they would go for, like 12J35W260Y.

Their main routes like PTY-GRU and PTY-EZE might warrant wide-body capacity - it already does and Copa runs 2 737s to the same bank of connections sometimes.

PTY is an excellent HUB has many connections, besides COPA is a member of Star Alliance and has strong territories, an order of Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners would be excellent for long-haul operations, plus these teams can perform routes such as AKL, SYD, PEK, ICN, JNB and NRT to connect them all with America

Let them start with Europe since that is the traditional long haul market from Latin America. Japan would be great but 15 hours may be three hours too far. Sydney would be nice but too far.

Why ruin a good thing?

Copa's management must have pondered this so many times ever since the hub in PTY became so powerful.

A better exercise would be to try and guess what has actually HELD them in doing so. I would guess that up to this point, it probably hasn't been worth it for them to have a small subfleet of aircraft for just a couple of true long-haul destinations.

incitatus wrote:

Chile, Argentina and Brazil are well connected to North America. Yet, Copa has thrived in the market. I can see PTY-MAD aggregating traffic from all of Latin America to be served several times per day.

I completely agree with this point.

I find it rather amusing when users here post that since Brazil, Argentina and Chile are so well connected with nonstop flights to Europe and North America, people will seek no other option. An absolute paradigm.

I've flown EZE-BOG with Avianca in J twice in the last 6 months. On both flights there was an overwhelming majority of passengers, mostly Argentineans, who were connecting in BOG onwards to MAD. Have to admit I was surprised the first time because it IS quite the detour. Spoke to one of them and told me he was a Star Gold and usually takes this route because of mileage purposes.

It's anectodal, I know, but serves to show the point that when given good alternatives and choices, people will be there to take them. With PTY full of Brasilian and Argentineans all over the place I don't doubt for a minute that Copa has the crowd to fill flights to a good 2-3 destinations in Europe.

Not even Air Panama International ventured into the transatlantic market with their DC-10. Interesting.

Let me guess, Flights to Madrid?

Doesn't really make sense though because for many passengers, they would have to backtrack to Panama before going east to Europe. Maybe East Asian cities but I don't think there's enough demand.

You'd be surprised to see a huge amount of China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Japanese business (and government) ventures in the Caribbean, Central, and South America.

With the new terminal opening next year, we may see an opportunity for Copa to do some possible fleet upgauging discussions.

usxguy wrote:

You'd be surprised to see a huge amount of China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Japanese business (and government) ventures in the Caribbean, Central, and South America.

With the new terminal opening next year, we may see an opportunity for Copa to do some possible flert upgauging discussions.

Unless they are going to fly directly to Indonesia, or somehow change Japanese businessman strict nationalism of using their national airlines, it would be quite difficult to attract those 2 costumer.

Now, maybe the chinese would do, but all they care about is cheap tickets. So unless Copa offer a really cheap flights, the mainlanders wouldn't even bother to look at it.

Now flights to most Mainland chinese cities are hella far. Around 7750nm to more than 8100nm or so, only A350-900 and A350-1000 could do these. So no B787 at all.
So yeah, though luck.

DeltaPrince wrote:

Not even Air Panama International ventured into the transatlantic market with their DC-10. Interesting.

Air Panama then (some Xmas season in the 80's) got the DC10 for extra capacity between PTY and MIA, I doubt it was ever flown PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX.

2travel2know2 wrote:

DeltaPrince wrote:

Not even Air Panama International ventured into the transatlantic market with their DC-10. Interesting.

Air Panama then (some Xmas season in the 80's) got the DC10 for extra capacity between PTY and MIA, I doubt it was ever flown PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX.

I never said that Air Panama used the DC-10 on PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX. I said that Air Panama never ventured into the transatlantic market. Sorry, but PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX are not transatlantic routes.

Please refer to a world map.

DeltaPrince wrote:

2travel2know2 wrote:

DeltaPrince wrote:

Not even Air Panama International ventured into the transatlantic market with their DC-10. Interesting.

Air Panama then (some Xmas season in the 80's) got the DC10 for extra capacity between PTY and MIA, I doubt it was ever flown PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX.

I never said that Air Panama used the DC-10 on PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX. I said that Air Panama never ventured into the transatlantic market. Sorry, but PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX are not transatlantic routes.

Please refer to a world map.

Air Panama never ventured into the transatlantic market with that DC10 because it just needed it for extra capacity. Regional routes were mentioned as an example that not even in those high demand routes then that aircraft was flown. Sorry if you didn't get it.

If you were to superimpose DXB over PTY on a map, it would very apparent that the vast majority of land around DXB is entirely ocean around PTY. In fact, more than a 90-degree arc opens to the emptiest ocean on the planet (the Pacific), and the unique geography of the Americas puts it on no one's way to Europe at all.

On the other hand, it is on everyone's path between the northern and southern hemisphere. Not 100%, of course, but enough to offer unique connecting opportunities to avoid double connections and transfers of airports, such as Cordoba and Mendoza, which would usually necessitate transferring airports in Buenos Aires.

Copa has found its niche, and I hope their future expansion includes us here in SAN. Hopefully the issue of the arrival time with the international facilities department can be worked out and we can add yet another fabulous new international service begin!

2travel2know2 wrote:

DeltaPrince wrote:

2travel2know2 wrote:

Air Panama then (some Xmas season in the 80's) got the DC10 for extra capacity between PTY and MIA, I doubt it was ever flown PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX.

I never said that Air Panama used the DC-10 on PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX. I said that Air Panama never ventured into the transatlantic market. Sorry, but PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX are not transatlantic routes.

Please refer to a world map.

Air Panama never ventured into the transatlantic market with that DC10 because it just needed it for extra capacity. Regional routes were mentioned as an example that not even in those high demand routes then that aircraft was flown. Sorry if you didn't get it.

What I “get” is that you were so quick to try to correct someone who wasn’t wrong. In your zeal, you missed the fact that I said “transatlantic.”

I love it when someone on here is so eager to correct and they mess up themselves.

If you were trying to prove a point that Air Panama didn’t EVEN use the DC-10 for high-capacity routes then you should have said, “I doubt it was ever EVEN flown PTY-LIM/BOG/MEX.

You’re welcome.