Copa Airlines demands compensation from Boeing over MAX 9 groundings

Copa Airlines expects to see compensation from Boeing over the January grounding of its 737 MAX 9s and anticipated delivery delays, airline executives confirmed in a fourth-quarter earnings call, with around 20% of the airline’s daily flights cancelled in January as a result of the FAA’s emergency airworthiness directive. Although the airline’s passenger traffic was up 11.1% in the fourth quarter of 2023 (with a load factor rising marginally to 86.7%), the grounding of 21 MAX 9s – impacting operations from January 6 to 29 – marked a “significant lost opportunity”. While CEO Pedro Heilbron noted that Boeing “continues to