Should I Fly COPA?
 

We're heading to an Antarctic cruise and United MP awards for travel to Buenos Aires are more than double award travel on COPA, so we're looking at going with the COPA tickets. Since I've not flown on COPA before, I wanted to get a sense of whether others have had good experiences, esp. in circumstances where there are delays or cancellations. (We had a terrible experience with UAL last year heading to the Galapagos, with flight cancellations and a nearly missed cruise.)

Has anyone had a good or bad cancellation experience, including in Panama City? English-speaking customer service team there?

I fly CM on a monthly basis in Central America primarily. Never had an issue, always on time, so can't tell you how they deal with reroutings/rescheduling etc
You get full meals on board even on short flights but quality is not great.

Service in Panama is not excellent in my experience, but again I have hardly ever had to address any issues with them in the first place.

i am sitting in a bad hotel room in panama right now because we sat on the ground at jfk for a hour and a half while the bags they had loaded into the rear compartment got moved to the middle compartment. We missed the onward connection at pty.The service in business on 1st flight was awful with the attendants hiding in front and the way they dealt with or i should i say did not deal with the problem was crazy.The gate agent had us running from one side of the airport to the other to catch a plane that had left 20 min earlier. Then we all had to que up and wait as we were told we had to take the same flight tomorrow. The whole process from deplaning to hotel took 3 and half hours for 8 people. They don't give dollar vouchers they confine everything to one hotel. we were told we could eat at any hotel restaurant by copa and told by hotel only the buffet line.
Ok, in my opinion copa was the best small latin american carrier but this is no longer the case. My last two flights before this they lost my bag on each one. The first took 3 days and the second took 6 days to reach me. I guess you get what you pay for.

COPA is a well run airline. They will generally get you where you are going on time. Service ranges from passable to very good. If things go wrong, you basically do not want to be on any latin american carrier. COPA is probably better than most. But they have different norms of customer service and IRROPS can be a complete disaster. You can't argue with them or "insist" on your rights, they will simply shut down and refuse to deal with you. It's cultural.

If you are high-level elite on UA, you will be treated much better during IRROPS with UA. If you are not elite, it's going to suck on either airline, probably slightly less with UA.

COPA's front line agents generally speak English well.

Mostly +1 to the above.

I agree that the front line agents generally speak English well, but one drawback is that gate announcements are made in Spanish first and then not always intelligible English. I was a little stressed out about this back in the days that I did not speak Spanish.

My only experience with IRROPS went well, though it was a simple one. Due to late take off from JFK, I missed my early morning connection. However, as I walked off the plane I was handed a business-class BP for the next flight, leaving two hours later. I should note that was my first missed connection in about 75 transiits through PTY in the last 3 years.

No matter what airline you fly, as many posters on FT have said on many occasions, if you need to be somewhere to get on a boat or join a tour, plan to fly in a day or two early. Even the best-run airline is going to have IRROPS situations. Also, keep in mind that COPA has many more flights per day to BA than UA. If there is a problem on UA, you're probably facing a 24 hour delay. On COPA, there is a good chance it will be much less than that.

Thanks for info everyone. @War: sounds like my UA experience in Houston last year en route to Quito, though airport staff were pros. Good luck!

i agree, they used to be one of my favorite airlines but three bad experiences in a row within a month is more than coincidence. If something goes wrong, forget about it. They have no structure to deal with it. Cultural or not it makes for a very rough ride.

And if you want free potato chips and pasteurized process cheese food before noon, you're out of luck!:p

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...-11-30-am.html

Narrow-bodied planes vs. wide-bodied you should get with UA if that's a factor.