I am going to be Central America later this year and was thinking of taking a side trip to Cuba. After doing some research I believe this should be possible, but I wanted to see if anyone had any experience doing something similar or any other advice.

It looks like Copa is a Flying Blue partner, so I should be able to book a reward flight using Flying Blue miles. The Flying Blue miles calculator indicates that I should be able to book a round trip flight from PTY to HAV for 25k miles. However, the Flying Blue site doesn't actually show Copa availability.

So using the Avianca site (another Copa partner) I'm able to see plenty of award availability. Is there any reason the same availability shouldn't be available on Flying Blue? Assuming availability on Copa, would I be able to return to SJO instead of PTY?

Also, I would be getting the Flying Blue miles by transferring from Amex Membership Rewards. I've seen some reports of Flying Blue shutting down accounts if they were only used to transfer in from flexible points programs, is this still a concern?

Can anyone find any flaws in my plan?