Copa Airlines at Tampa International

CARRIER ANALYSIS: Copa Airlines at Tampa International Airport
May 5, 2019
By: Michael Gutta

With my first five blog reports I have reviewed domestic airlines, routes, and fleet changes. For my first investigation of a foreign air carrier, I have chosen to evaluate the service history of Copa Airlines at Tampa International Airport. Copa Airlines is the flag carrier of Panama, with a major connecting hub for Latin America at Tocumen International in Panama City. Copa began service to Tampa International on December 16, 2013, offering four flights weekly each way. For this blog report I decided to look back at the USDOT data all the way back inaugural flight. Unfortunately, the full-year of 2018 international flight numbers will not be published until June 13, so for now this study encompassed 4 years (2014-2017) of data, plus December 2013.

Copa Airlines Boeing 737-700 registered as HP-1371 at Tampa International Airport (Michael Gutta).

In the first 4 years of service by Copa at Tampa International, there have been over 850 departing flights, with over 110,000 departing seats, and nearly 80,000 departing passengers. The average load factor over the 4-year period was 72%, though it has been increasing in the last few years. Copa Airlines has mostly maintained 4 times a week service from Panama City (PTY) to Tampa International (TPA), except for a slight increase in the first full year of service, 2014, at roughly 4.4 times a week service.  This average value was, no-doubt, affected by the daily service that was offered in December 2014. Below, the annual departing statistics are shown, with a peak number of passengers and full-year load factor in 2017, the most recent year of available data.


The chart above shows a low for passengers and load factor in 2015, at just over 18 thousand departing passengers and an average annual load factor of 65.7%. Fortunately, the number of departing passengers increased 18,036 in 2015, to 18,705 in 2016, to 20,941 in 2017. This passenger growth was achieved even with a flat number of departures. Accordingly, the load factor increased from a low of 65.7% in 2015 to 72.9% in 2016 to a full-year high of 78.5% in 2017.

In addition to the annual trends, I wanted to review the seasonality of this route. Reviewing a month-by-month history only confirmed that 2015 was quite grim, with May and September 2015 data showing a load factor below 50%. December 2015, though, hit an annual peak of nearly 88% monthly load factor. This large swing in monthly load factor indicates a strong seasonality effect, though again this seems to have improved in recent years. The plot below shows the monthly statistics for the last full year of data, 2017.


The 2017 monthly values seem to indicate that the seasonality effect has improved, with the worst two months (April and October) sporting load factors of right above 65%. Additionally, Copa posted the highest monthly load factor from all 4 years of service for 7 of the 12 calendar months in 2017. This feat alone is quite remarkable and shows that either the route itself is strengthening, Copa is using more appropriately sized aircraft, or Copa has adjusted seat prices based on the seasonal demand to fill aircraft more efficiently.

Copa Airlines Boeing 737-700 taxiing during a busy day at Terminal F of Tampa International Airport (Michael Gutta).

Moving forward, from the publication of this data anyway, Copa and the Tampa International Airport have already announced that daily service would begin on July 17, 2018. Additionally, Copa will continue to evolve their fleet with the Boeing 737 Max aircraft, which has already made appearances in Tampa. With the growing traffic statistics and the announcement of daily flights, Copa Airlines at Tampa International seems to be in a good place, pending any additional competition from Latin American airlines. This seems unlikely in the near future at least. With Mexico City (MEX) being slot constrained effectively eliminating Aeromexico or Volaris, the most likely additional Latin airlines would be Avianca, Azul, Gol, or Latam. None of these have quite the same North-to-South connectivity that Copa has at Panama City (PTY) though.


Maybe more likely than additional Latin American airlines serving Tampa International would be for Copa Airlines to begin additional US service. The map above shows all US cities served by Copa in red, with Tampa highlighted green, and all other US cities having service to Panama City but not by Copa shown in black. Interestingly, Copa does not serve any cities in the state of Texas, though airline partner United provides service from Houston (IAH) to Panama City (PTY). Will Copa see a future service to the large Southwestern cities of Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio, or Austin soon?

Copa Airlines taking off from Tampa International Airport runway 19R (Michael Gutta).

Let me know your thoughts on this blog post and potential future topics involving the Tampa International Airport, Copa Airlines, or really anything aviation related.

Data compiled for the report and figures above came from the USDOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics T100 Tables. A few other links to news stories are also shown below:

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