SANTIAGO, Chile—The Costa Rican MRO Coopesa received long-awaited approval to move its facility at the Juan Santamaria (San Jose) International Airport, with groundbreaking scheduled for April, according to its CEO. The new facility will double capacity and provide new-build hangars to replace its early 1960s ones.

The new facility with two hangars will feature 16 bays—up from its current eight. One hangar will accommodate widebody aircraft, which will expand Coopesa’s service portfolio at a time when global widebody maintenance demand exceeds supply.  

Coopesa CEO Rimsky Buitrago tells Aviation Week he expects the facility to open in early 2029.

He anticipates construction of the two hangars to take 18 months. After they are finished, Coopesa will start relocating from its existing facilities to the new ones. During the switch, “we will work in parallel at the old facility and the new facility,” Buitrago says.

He says Coopesa “has different customers interested in being part of the new facility, especially because we will have widebody capabilities and a much more state-of-the-art base.”  

Buitrago has been driving a parallel strategy of building new facilities, new information technology systems and operational efficiencies since returning as Coopesa CEO in 2023. The MRO uses EmpowerMX’s FleetCycle for maintenance control, as well as internally developed systems, and has been integrating them as part of is paperless MRO initiative.

When asked about the investment total, Buitrago said he couldn’t disclose that, “but you can imagine it’s a lot of money.” He says, “we have the cash flow [from] several financial partners.”

To accommodate the expansion, Coopesa will need to add 400 mechanics to its existing 600, says the executive.

The independent MRO planned to start constructing the new hangars in 2012 but was delayed first due to government decisions, then because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The push post-pandemic became more urgent because the Juan Santamaria International Airport wants to expand the passenger terminal to where Coopesa is currently located.

“This is a national goal, and I think we have all the stars aligned right now to do the expansion of the airport, relocating Coopesa and doubling the MRO capacity to take advantage of the excess demand of MRO services,” Buitrago says.