Pedro Heilbron (born March 5, 1958, in Colón, Panama) is the CEO of Copa Holdings S.A., the parent company of Panamanian carrier

Copa Airlines Compañía Panameña de Aviación, S.A., (commonly referred to as Copa and branded simply as "Copa Airlines") is the flag carrier of Panama. It is headquartered in Panama City, Panama, with its main hub at Tocumen International Airport. Copa i ...

and Colombian carrier

AeroRepública Copa Airlines Colombia is a commercial passenger airline An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or al ...

Early life and education

Heilbron received a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in economics from Holy Cross, Massachusetts in 1979, and an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

from

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Chartered in 1821 by the United States Congress, GWU is the largest Higher educat ...

Career

Copa Airlines

Heilbron joined Copa Airlines as CEO in 1988. Under his leadership, Copa expanded and transformed from a regional player into one of the three large air groups in Latin America, increasing the fleet from two (1988) to 98 aircraft (2014) and annual revenues growing from $20 million to $3 billion in the same time period. The company joined the

Star Alliance Star Alliance is the world's largest global airline alliance. Founded on 14 May 1997, its CEO is Jeffrey Goh and its headquarters is located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. , Star Alliance is the largest of the three global alliances by passenge ...

in 2012. In December 2016, Heilbron was elected as chairman of the Star Alliance Chief Executive Board (CEB), succeeding former chairman Calin Rovinescu.

Additional affiliations

Pedro Heilbron is also a member of the board of governors of IATA, past president and current vice-president of the Latin American Airline Association (ALTA).

Awards and recognition

In 2006, Heilbron received the Bravo Award as CEO of the Year by Latin Trade Magazine and was named Executive of the Year by the Panamanian Association of Corporate Executive (APEDE) two years later. In 2009, he was awarded the Airline Business Lifetime Achievement Award by

Airline Business RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British multinational information and analytics company headquartered in London, England. Its businesses provide scientific, technical and medical information and analytics; legal information and analytics; ...

. In 2014, Heilbron was recognized with the

Tony Jannus award The Tony Jannus Award recognizes outstanding individual achievement in scheduled commercial aviation by airline executives, inventors and manufacturers, and government leaders. The award is conferred annually by the Tony Jannus Distinguished Avia ...

by the Tony Jannus Disdinguished Aviation Society, (which was formed by the Tampa and

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

chambers of commerce A chamber of commerce, or board of trade, is a form of business network. For example, a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to a ...

References

External links

Copaair.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heilbron, Pedro Living people People from Colón, Panama 1958 births Panamanian chief executives George Washington University School of Business alumni College of the Holy Cross alumni