Traveling in times of prohibition

About a month before the planned start of the trip the guys that call the shots in Panama said something the powers that be at home didn’t take too well, so the locals threw a tantrum and retaliated by prohibiting all flights between SOT and PTY. Flights to and from Peru and the Dominican Republic met a similar fate. High politics…
Since I wasn’t going to lose all those carefully planned segments from PTY onwards and up to the return to PTY as well as the booked and largely paid accommodation over a temper tantrum, I had to resort to plan B.
Copa Airlines sent a message notifying that the fare for the segments home-PTY-home would be reimbursed (the refund was credited in late October), so instead I booked a return ticket home-BOG-PTY on Avianca in Y. In order to ensure a seamless transition to the main part of the itinerary, I had to leave a day earlier than planned and spend a night in Panama City on the outbound, and spend a night at BOG to connect from one flight arriving at midnight to the next one leaving at 7:14 the next morning on the return.

The beginning and end of the itinerary would now look like this:

Positioning flight home-Bogotá, Avianca Y
Flight Bogotá-Panama City, Avianca Y
Overnight in Panama City
Flight Panama City-Fort Lauderdale, Copa Airlines Y
…
Flight Chicago-Panama City, Copa Airlines C
Copa Club Lounge at PTY
Flight Panama City-Bogotá, Avianca Y
Bivouac at BOG
Flight Bogotá-home, Avianca Y[/c]

The final long distance portion of the trip

Map generated by GreatCircle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz

Some may wonder why not take a direct flight from Somewhere Out There to the U.S. and save yourself all that trouble? Well, that’s because there is another layer of prohibition preventing that. Five years ago the U.S. Department of Transportation ordered the suspension of all commercial passenger and cargo flights between the two countries over security concerns. So that’s that.