 | Copa Airlines: Encyclopedia II - Copa Airlines - History
Copa Airlines - History
The airline was established on 21 June 1944 and started operations on 5 May 1947. It was founded with assistance from Pan American, which took a 32% stake. It began operations with a small fleet of Douglas DC-3/Douglas C-47 aircraft. The airline saw its first international service in the 1960s, when services were inaugurated to cities in Jamaica, Colombia, and Costa Rica. It became wholly Panamanian owned in 1972.
Until the early 1980s, the airline had stiff competition from Air Panama, until then a better known airline to the international public. Copa heightened the competition by acquiring its first jet, a Boeing 737-100, and inaugurating flights to Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as well as to the Dominican Republic and Miami, Florida. The 737 became a staple of the Copa fleet: it is currently the only type of airliner the airline uses.
Expansion continued during the 1990s, when Copa's 737s began to be sighted at Ministro Pistarini International Airport in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Benitez International Airport in Santiago, Chile, José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba, Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, Peru, Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City, Mexico and many other Latin American airports.
On 19 May 1998, Continental Airlines acquired a 49% stake in the airline, marking the beginning of a comprehensive marketing and operating alliance. Since then, it has adopted a livery and corporate logo which resemble those of Continental, and participates in Continental's OnePass frequent flyer program.
In 2000, Copa inaugurated services to Los Angeles, Cancun, Mexico and Orlando, as well as to São Paulo, Brazil. In 2004 it began service to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, and announced, in August of that year, a code-sharing alliance with Mexico's Mexicana de Aviacion.
On June 1, 2005, Copa announced that it had purchased 90% of the Colombian domestic air carrier AeroRepública, having earlier announced plans to codeshare with them. The airline also announced its plans to make AeroRepública the second largest carrier in Colombia after the nation's flag carrier, Avianca. It plans to increase domestic destinations, modernize its fleet, and initiate the airline's first international destinations in late 2005. A few days later it was announced among the four future associate member of Skyteam Alliance, due to join by 2006.
On December 15, 2005, Copa Holdings, the parent company of Copa Airlines, launched an IPO of 14 million shares in the New York Stock Exchange thus becoming the third Latin American airline to be traded in the NYSE (The other two are LAN Airlines of Chile and the Brazilian carrier GOL).
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
