Starting June Copa Airlines will offer direct flights from Panama City to Georgetown in Guyana, Fort Lauderdale in the U.S. and Montreal, Canada.
From a press release by Copa Airlines:
Copa Airlines, a subsidiary of Copa Holdings, SA (NYSE: CPA) has announced its growth plans for the first half of 2014, including the start of three (3) new direct flights from Panama to Montreal, Canada, Fort Lauderdale USA and Georgetown, Guyana, expanding its aircraft fleet and 10% growth in available seats.
TAP, BlueSky and Aeromexico are negotiating flight connections from Portugal, Grand Cayman and Mexico City to Tocumen airport.
The Mexican carrier has already made the first approaches for connections to the Tocumen International Airport. Although it has not defined when flights would start, representatives indicated that it could begin with seven a week.
During the first eight months of 2013 5.1 million passengers transited through the main airport of Panama.
The number of passengers who travelled in that period is greater than the 4.5 million tourists who came through the air terminal in the same period in 2012, indicated by data supplied by the Department of Statistics at Tocumen International Airport.
During the first half of 2013 3.8 million passengers transited through the main airport of Panama.
Data provided by the Department of Statistics of the International Airport of Tocumen, reveals that during the first six months of 2013 the number of passengers passing though in a day was 20,807 while in the same period in 2012 it was 19,000.
Panamaamerica.com.pa reports: "Most passengers were from Miami, Bogota, San Jose and Caracas.
In terms of how modern the infrastructure for air transport is, Panama leads the field, followed distantly by Costa Rica.
"None of the airports in Central America comes close to knocking Tocumen off its number one position in the ranking by Skytrax, nor the ranking by the World Economic Forum. The latter measures the quality of infrastructure for air travel in the country , where Panama climbed from 38th place in 2007 to last year reach the prestigious position of sixth place," reported Elsalvador.com.
In the last five years aviation activity in the country has doubled, currently employing nearly 40 thousand people.
In the period 2006-11, air transport increased from 2.1% to 4.1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Panama, or approximately $1.279 billion.
"According to the report prepared by consultancy firm Oxford Economics at the request of the International Air Transport Association (Iata), aeronautical activity represented at the end of 2011 about $1.279 billion of GDP, which at that time was estimated at about $31 billion ", reported Prensa.com.
Counting the projects Panatropolis, Global Business Terminal, and the Parque Sur alone, over $605 million are being invested.
From a press release from the Panamanian Tourism Authority:
Since its discovery, Panama has been a strategic point for all matters relating to connectivity. In the past, this led to the construction of the first interoceanic railway and later a first class project for humanity, the Canal, both having the aim of making global travel and commerce between the two seas possible.