They might as well just say September 1st like Argentina. This way if you can open earlier it will be a welcome surprise

Welcomed surprised but with no one booked on the flights?

Depending how much notice given I’m sure there would be a few people on the flights.

I've been tracking various flights from US cities to PTY as Copa keeps moving the goalposts on restarting. What I generally see is well sold flights for the first day of resumed operations, sometimes even sold out flights. Then on subsequent flights the demand drops off greatly.

Nobody will want to fly internationally for tourism or business until it's assured that no mandatory quarantine policies will be in effect on arrival. We can expect a hodge-podge of varying and possibly crazy rules out of all the countries Copa serves.

Agreed the 14 day quarantine will be a killer. While not related to COPA Italy appears to be the first country to open its borders internationally without a 14 day quarantine beginning June 3rd

I am in the same boat and would really appreciate if you could link me to the notice you referred to or even copy how you worded it in the email. I have three tickets I'll need refunded and have gotten screwed so many times by Copa in the past, I need to win for once.

FWIW, Copa just cancelled our itinerary in October, San Francisco to Cartagena. I pulled up the reservation on the website. The "refund" option is non-functional. The FAQ mention a couple of voucher options -- nothing about refunds. I see no way of requesting the refund from them in a convenient way.

I won't play this game. I just disputed the charges with American Express.

Dear passenger,

We’d like to inform you that we have canceled your flight CM 383 on 10/8/2020 from SFO to PTY.

We are very sorry about the situation and will do our best to assist you. If you have firm travel plans, please contact our telephone service centers to reschedule your trip. If you plan to use your ticket in the future, but don’t have a date yet, there’s no need to contact us now. Your ticket will be valid to travel without additional charges until December 31st, 2021.

If you’d like to keep your ticket value but you’re unsure about where you’d like to travel, you may click here to exchange your ticket for a travel certificate plus a 20% bonus value.
Thanks for your understanding. We invite you to change your flight, not your desire to travel.

Sincerely,
Copa Airlines

Wow!! That’s quite far out. Makes you wonder if they are canceling an itinerary all the way into October

It could be more about ceasing service at SFO.

Doubt CM is ceasing services to SFO. It's one of the destination they plan to start as soon as lockdown is lifted. Most likely just reducing frequencies.

Now July 23
 

The government tacked on another month to the international flight prohibition, if anyone is counting. Probably the least surprising news I've read in my lifetime.

Makes me wonder if any such ban is really necessary. Would anybody come if they did open?

But people could leave :p

There's still Panamanian stuck abroad, and there's people that will need a connection to go from A to B.

August 7, when will it end?
 

Copa has announced they will not fly until August 7. That's surpassing the mandate to keep Tocumen closed (July 23).

Meanwhile, repatriation / humanitarian flights are occurring at what seems to be a daily frequency. In fact, Tocumen's Twitter feed is really interesting, showing very strange airlines, and many wide-body aircraft arriving.

https://twitter.com/tocumenaero

Starting to think they may not begin flying until 2021.