ambassador of panama says copa is interested in establishing flights to POP

Let's hope he's REALLY interested...that would be great!

Always good to have options. Now if they could just make the pricing to POP competitive.

And sooooo much better than PAWA Dominicana! :laugh:

I flew with "Copa" and "Copa Colombia" a few times. Excellent service, new planes, easy to navigate Panama airport.

It would eliminate a stop in Miami, which is HUGE!!!!

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A deal with cruise ship operators at Maimon indicated.

Copa's flight prices out of SDQ are very competitive indeed compared with Punta Cana so one hopes that they don't charge such high prices for a PoP flight.

Criss Colon said:

It would eliminate a stop in Miami, which is HUGE!!!!

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Copa is flying from SDQ and PUJ now. No Miami with them.

Tocumen International rocks.....I am flying Copa next month with a Panama connection from LA to STI.....My favorite airline because they feed you too much, alcohol is included and movies too...... and I get mileage on United.

Best prices for duty free liquor in the world at Tocumen. Ask for a discount and you will pay even less.

I flew Copa several times last year and this year, going to South America. I flew on miles from SDQ. Watch out on rates though. From POP, last November, it was cheaper to fly American (300 less) than Copa from SDQ. If they come to POP, it'll be nice if they come in cheaper than American.

PS: don't particularly like Copa small airplanes for a 7 1/2 hour overnight flight

santiagodude said:

Tocumen International rocks.....I am flying Copa too...... and I get mileage on United.

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Not for much longer. They have ended their affiliation with the mileage plus program and have started their own frequent flyer program. I believe the effective date is next months (July 2015).

Copa has some strange pricing. Catch a sale price and its super cheap, but regular prices can be more expensive than the competition.... it seems to me.

ju10prd said:

Copa's flight prices out of SDQ are very competitive indeed compared with Punta Cana so one hopes that they don't charge such high prices for a PoP flight.

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You have to realize PUJ is a tourist destination, with heavy demand. Demand is much higher to PUJ than to SDQ and STI combined. Latin American tour operators book the cheapest fare brackets months' in advance. As time progresses, only more expensive fare brackets are left available for booking. Having said that, you can usually get competitively priced flights out of PUJ (almost same price as SDQ) if you book 6-8 weeks in advance. But for last minute travel with Copa, SDQ is cheaper, simply because the cheapest fare brackets get booked to/from SDQ at later stages than they are getting booked to/from PUJ.

P.S. DR has a very liberal aviation policy, if Copa is interested, DR will grant them rights. It all depends on route planning at COPA. And when they start, they will have most likely prices like STI, which is a bit more pricy than SDQ (they compete with Avianca on both SDQ and PUj routes).

In the news from yesterday, LATAM will open up base in Bogota for flights between Caribbean and South America to directly compete with COPA. Let's hope DR will be some of their next destinations (they already fly from Bogota to Cancun and Aruba), hopefully they add up flights from BOG soon to DR (SDQ/PUJ), that will put more competitive pressure on Copa's fares (Avianca's routes to DR started exerting downward pressure on COPA's fares about a year or so ago). LATAM already flies to PUJ from LIM, EZE and SCL, but BOG would actually be a similar proposition as PTY - hub to connect Central, South America and Caribbean.

http://www.reportur.com/colombia/2015/07/08/latam-elige-bogota-para-abrir-su-hub-al-caribe/