Copa posts small Q2 profit despite travel restrictions

Copa Holdings, parent of Panama’s Copa Airlines, achieved a small profit during Q2 2021 as operations began to normalise following the long Covid-19-driven disruption. But travel restrictions in many countries in Latin America are continuing to drag on the company’s ability to reinstate flights, preventing it from quickly returning to 2019 levels. The Panama City-headquartered carrier earned a $28m profit in three months ending on 30 June, it says on 5 August. Revenue for the quarter came in at $304m, down 53% from the $645m it earned in the same period in pre-coronavirus 2019. But the two diverging trends that Copa reported in Q1 – some countries opening travel, others locking down further – continues, CE Pedro Heilbron says during the company’s Q2 earnings call. “The story has not changed much. Several countries have maintained, and in some cases increased, travel restrictions, which has affected our ability to reinstate capacity,” Heilbron says. The industry, he adds, “still faces significant challenges” in Latin America. “Practically every market has some sort of travel restrictions,” Heilbron says. Some countries have testing requirements, some require quarantines. “Where we are most affected is when countries like Argentina restrict the number of flights... The open markets – like Brazil, Mexico and the US for most origins – those markets are seeing a faster recovery than the ones that have higher restrictions.” <br/>