Flying CopaAir - A Word of Caution
 

I fly Copa all the time and generally consider them to be a good airline.

Today a friend was flying MDE to PTY and connecting to AUS. All Copa flights and on a paid business class ticket. MDE was fogged in this AM and he was delayed. He missed his connection to AUS. Weather happens.

In PTY they told him that since it was weather related that he would have to spend the night in PTY (at his expense) and take the direct AUS flight the next day. He asked to be put on a UA flight to IAH with a connection to AUS. They refused - but here is the odd thing - they would be willing to send him to IAH on UA but not all the way to AUS. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. He talked to at least 3 people and no one was willing to get him to AUS today.

I am only sharing this because if you are flying to be in a meeting, COPA tickets may not be the way to go.

Interesting situation. Was he insistent on flying in J ??? Could that have been the problem if J was sold out for the short hop IAH-AUS on a day-of change?

I could definitely see CM agents being unable or untrained to make such a change in fare class or have two different classes on a changed itinerary like that.

He was more than happy to fly either class. But, yes, in my experience flying COPA, their agents are either not trained or not authorized to do anything that requires anything complex. However, I know he spoke with supervisors and people who generally should have at least known what number to call. An airline that markets themselves as full service needs to do better.

I could be wrong here, but just wondering out loud...I know in cases of IRROPS most airlines are willing to send you to another city within a certain distance band...I wanna say it's 500 miles but I could be wrong. So, if I HAD TO GUESS, I'd say Copa offers to get you to IAH and calls it a day, saying that's far enough, because IAH-AUS is 140 miles according to GCmap. I wonder if he had been ticketed to Seattle for instance, if they would've said it's IAH and that's it.

Just a hunch.

I never completed the story. He booked his own ticket from IAH to AUS. He submitted the ticket for reimbursement to Copa and received full reimbursement. So, obviously, they realize that they are contractually obligated to get you to your paid for destination.

Once again, I believe the problem is that no one is empowered to fix the problem at the airport ... there is one person in some room somewhere that can reimburse but after the fact. Copa should do better than this for a full service airline.