Review: Copa Airlines Business Class Los Angeles To Panama City To Buenos Aires

Used them many times to travel to my country Uruguay.

This is excellent and a nice change of pace (though, of course, I love the typical pace of the blog, too).

Tuna sauce is a specialty of the Turin region of Italy, where it is deliciously served over thin slices of rare or raw veal.

I must have had the same FA as you but on EZE PTY also in Business. She was like a prison warden. I had ordered a gluten free meal but she presented me with a vegetarian meal which was 90% gluten. I was told in no uncertain terms that a) I had ordered such and b) it was the only meal I was permitted. Of course, there were no pre-departure drinks and nobody dared ask for anything for fear of being slapped down.

The dentist analogy seems particularly apt. The trip seemed to hold all the joy of a root canal. Sorry it sucked, but the review was a lot of fun.

My service on BOS-PTY and PTY-SDQ and back has always been much better then their cousin UA. I'd take Copa any day over United when flying to Central/South America with a possible exception a lay flat UA BF seat. I usually get upgraded by Copa as a UA Plat and previously as a Gold.

Am I the only sky interior fan? The "perceived" extra headroom on the 737 is really nice.

And usually on Alaska they are using the pink lights instead of the blue ones.

you paid 60000 miles for this one way???? this is CPU and there are mileage running fare from time to time..

Well written piece. A little different comedic tone than Ben's, but I still enjoyed it. Consider starting your own blog, I'd be very interested in reading it.

Thanks, guys, for the kind words. @Alan: it's 55,000 miles one-way. For now, I do think United elites are eligible for complimentary upgrades on Copa, but I'm not a United elite and wouldn't have wanted to risk it anyway. For what it's worth, I believe it's 35,000 miles one-way to fly business class from North America to Northern South America, meaning if you're just interested in going to Panama City, or somewhere in Colombia or Peru, it's quite a bargain. And of course, "bargain" is all relative since I believe AA charges 50,000 miles one-way business class to Southern South America, but (I hate to say it) that's a pre-devaluation deal sure to vanish in a year or two. 55K miles is a sweet spot on the otherwise dismal post-devaluation United award chart.

I'd pay good money to know what the font is in their menu. It is so old school.

@Dave D - Futura, I'm pretty sure. Ben can give you all the info you might need to PayPal me good money 😉

That bacon looks disgusting.
I will be on the same flight LAX - PTY in business in seat 2A in a few months.

Hopefully i won't get the miserable flight attendant.

"These glimpses into a ghastly family dynamic..."

Yeah, that's pretty awful. Perhaps baby will grow up to be another Son of Sam or something. Great parenting, though, that's for sure.

And seriously, great writeup!

So funny and well-written! And useful. Maybe we will use Copa to break up the flights from IAD to EZE. Hope you continue posting. Love Ben's reports, but my flight travel is generally going to be far less glamorous than his.

Are there any tricks for forcing the UAL search engine to produce Copa options? I am trying to get from Boston to Santiago on a revenue ticket and am getting three leg options on UA metal and no Copa options, even when I know the flights exist

I flew JFK-PTY-POA last September. I thought the food was great and he service was hit-or-miss. On the first leg, the service was awful, on the second, it was great. You did the right thing by skipping the Codorniu. The United Club in PTY is worse than the ones in UA's hub cities, I hope that they improve it once they have their own loyalty program.

@erikoj Being a Boston flyer as well, just book on copa's website unless you have a really good reason not to.

You should try and review an AA flight MIA - CCS or any flight from MIA to north of south America but MIA -CCS I'm sure will the worst

I have flown Copa many times from Chicago to Panama, as well as to Santiago, Chile and back to Mexico City, usually in business. Your comments are spot-on. The business class service is appallingly inconsistent. We've had great experiences and dismal ones. Many of the flight attendants just don't seem to understand what good service means. The food is mediocre at best, but, as you pointed out, the business model is awesome and Copa is expanding quickly, building a new terminal in Panama City. Being able to get from North America to Santiago, Buenos Aires or Rio without having to overnight is a blessing.
I just wish they'd get rid of what seems to be the last remaining old decor 737-800 in the fleet, which flies from Chicago to Panama City.

Interesting post. My wife and I are flying LAX to Lima this fall for a Peru trip. I did look at Copa, but she really wanted a full lie flat Business class seat, so we're on the LAN 787 nonstop outbound and also return. I really know nothing about Copa stopover rules. If we could have broken up a flight to Peru with a short stay in Panama, maybe she would have considered it even though Copa isn't lie flat. Can you make any comments about their rules - what length stopover is allowed by Copa before continuing on to your final destination (on one award ticket, of course)?

I happened across this as I was searching for SeatGuru kind of stuff for my upcoming return to LAX on Copa (took the direct United Houston-Santiago flight down) and I have to say you have made me really NOT excited for my upcoming Copa business flight. I even looked at the date of article hoping that it was written long enough ago that it was outdated... no such luck. Also the need for SeatGuru on Copa business class is sort of ... superfluous ?? (maybe oxymoronic would be a better word for Copa-SeatGuru)
Well, however bad it is, it can't be as bad as my last Copa flight to Argentina where they delivered my bags 5 days late and where I had to wait in Mendoza, not a really unpleasant place to be stuck. During this 5 days there was absolutely no amount of pleading with Copa that would budge them on getting the bags to me whenever they deemed it convenient.

Don't know how I missed this the first time around, but this is a great write up. One of your funniest!

I fly with Copa regularly, in fact taking flight tomorrow night from LAS-PTY-SJO. They have 2 direct flights daily from my home city of Las Vegas to Tocumen. Copa is decent product and always on time. I fly Business Class when it is available and you can also 'bid' on a seat in Business Class after you have booked an economy ticket. I have had my bid accepted a number of times for as low as $220 USD. One word of warning, you select an Exit Row Seat, you must be fluent in Spanish and yes, they will test you with some questions in Spanish. If they feel you can't follow instructions in the native language, you will be moved to another seat!!

@Brad B - That's interesting about speaking Spanish in the exit row as I have flown in the exit row a few times and never been asked once. I know very beginner Spanish but I doubt I could pass their "test".

Brad....I got upgraded one time for $150 for a flight MVD-PTY

Just flew pty-Yul last night in bus class. No complaints at all. Nice airline

Copa is my go to airline for business trips in Latam. Rarely late and with coverage of every major city in the Americas. They run the second largest airline in Colombia too: Copa Colombia so is an excellent choice to travel within Colombia.

They may have erroneously called it bacon, they call it bacon in Italy also, but you were served, and what they serve in Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc. was in reality jamón- a type of cured ham.

Thanks for the write up. I was out looking for what business class seats were like on Copa since their seat picker gives no info and seat guru has no info. This helped me a lot and made me LOL.

WORST AIRLINE EVER! I got turned away one hour before my flight for reasons that are still shocking. My Costa Rica to Ecuador ticket via Panama got rerouted at the last minute through Colombia and the ticket agent insisted that I need an outbound flight out of Colombia even though it was just a transit stop!!!

Customer service is useless. No information to share. Might as well have been talking with a picnic table. Avoid this airline!

And now they are saying that a refund will take 2-3 months. I missed an important business meeting and am now paying for hotels on two continents while I scramble to find a new last-minute flight that doesn't cost a ton!