boywunder

Please share your experiences on COPA. I plan to fly them to Argentina and have no knowledge of their service. Thanks!

JaredH

Copa is part owned by CO and claims to mirror CO's service, although there are bound to be differences.

For instance, the interior of the a/c are supposed to follow CO's design, and the exteriors bear a number of similarities. CO and Copa also operate joint facilities at Copa's Panama City hub, including a joint PC.

CO's involvement with Copa is fairly recent and there appear to have been a number of changes since CO stepped in. I wonder if Copa will follow the path that CO Micronesia(formerly Micronesia Airlines) took.

jh

davistev

COPA is actually a really good airline. Certainly better than Continental Airlines by a mile. This said - Argentina is a long way to go in a small plane. Their Business Class is standard issue fare but their economy class is certainly better than CO.

Panama City airport is fine and it is clean. It certainly is not a Managua or a Tegucigalpa - thank goodness.

ElvisNYC

If you're planning to leave from a location in the US, I wouldn't suggest using CO/Copa.

Unfortunately flights to EZE must connect in PTY, requiring you to do an overnight because most CO flights to PTY (departing from a few US locations) do not allow time to connect for the EZE flight. If I still remember, flights out of PTY to EZE depart Mon/Tue-Fri.

I was trying to book an award ticket in F, every single option from EWR-PTY-EZE and return I had to do an overnight. My problem is the $20 departure tax (which can be collected if 6 hrs. or was it 10 hrs. have passed- informed by agent), and there's additional costs- hotel, transportation and meals. You can definately save the money and use it in Argentina.

When I exclusively used CO/Copa, Copa's Clase Ejecutiva was fantastic. The overall service from the FA's what impressed me the most. I miss Copa's service, but now I use AA for flights out of GYE, even though it requires connections in MIA.

duxfan

Also, you do realize that PTY-EZE will require you to spend 7 hours on a 737, right?

quinella66

I take my first Copa flight next year EWR-PTY-SCL. There was no way around the overnight in PTY so I extended it to an extra day and scheduled a Panama Canal tour - if you happen to be there on a Saturday and want to check out this option, go to:

www.big-ditch.com

eastwest

I was CCS bound when the Chavez government recently fell so CO rebooked me and instead of my IAH-CCS non stop I was flown to PTY and then connected to CCS on Copa.

Long story short. The plane and service were decent. Nothing horrible, nothing special. The ground crew in PTY were marginally helpful (they were probably stressed because there were lots of waylaid CCS bound pax). The Copa crew spoke very limited English but that may not be the case on flights that begin or end in the US, I don't know.

Lastly, they put us up in a not so nice hotel and forced us to pay the $20 departure tax even though we didn't enter the country of our own accord (we were forced to "enter" because we had to overnight because the airport in CCS was closed due to the violence.)

So I guess over all -- they're okay. I wouldn't go out of my way to fly them, but I wouldn't necessarily try to avoid them either.

Your FT friend,
-eastwest

davistev

They will not let you have an emergency exit row seat if you do not speak Spanish. However, this is common practice on many Latin American Airlines.

Viajero Joven

boywunder: the long and short is that COPA is a very good airline, connections work well to/from COPA operated flights from MIA-- and in fact, the EZE flight is a direct flight from LAX with a stop in PTY en route to EZE. The 6 1/2 hour flight time is on par with CO 737 flights EWR to to the west coast, and you can pretty much count on an elite upgrade on day of departure.

I wrote a lot more, but it got erased when I tried to post.

[This message has been edited by Viajero Joven (edited 10-03-2002).]

ColombianoNtx

I recently flew from Bogota to San Jose, Costa Rica (Via Panama City) on COPA. Fortunately, I was upgraded on each of these flights, which included meals on each of the one-hour hops. I found the service to be very pleasant. I've become quite accustomed to being on a 737-700 for 5 hours at a time (IAH-BOG), and find myself getting restless after 4, so I don't know how 6 hours would be.

SemiElite

That's interesting, and it does seem to make sense. But then, turnabout is fair play. Does anyone know if the FAA and U.S. carriers require emergency row pax to speak English???



------------------
"Read my lips! No more benefit cuts!"...Gordon Bethune

ExtrAAordinaire

Yes. Emergency exit row passengers are required to be able to understand crew member instructions (which, of course, are in English ).