Originally Posted by
ricktoronto
I think Copa and Avianca, TACA/LACSA, in the old days, tend to be pretty conservative in their schedules as well. E.g they pad the flight duration. Makes the schedule easier to meet or beat.
Every (long) TACA flight I took arrived early, sometimes as much as a hour.
Add airports like PTY and SAL as hubs where passengers go gate to gate with no formalities it's not hard to see awards won like this title.
COPA seems to be fairly good in assessing loads and wheelchair passengers as to boarding times so departures are mostly on time or early.
COPA will hold flights where they are limited to daily or less. I waited an hour on PTY YYZ due to a late inbound from Buenos Aíres and with no flight the next day to YYZ, which beats handling passengers who'd have a two day delay.
COPA could be even more efficient with decent signage in PTY and employees that actually know how to drive the sky bridge to the aircraft door. 15 minutes on the 7th. Of actual moving it.
copa is fortunate to have fairly mild weather in their hub. daily rain much of year, but rare to see lighting or weather holds in my experience.
re bolded parts -
1) right, I fly las-pty and reverse, and a late flight, for me, is one that arrives at the stated time. Very rare to be later, and usually earlier. In LAS my pick-up arrangements always factor in 30 minutes early arrival as normal. recently LAS luggage has been getting out before I get to customs, and I am global entry and sitting in first rows. That is really fast.
2) also right on the PTY folks and jet-bridges. another delay event, if your destination is PTY, is luggage can take 40 minutes to show up or longer after plane parks at gate.