For an airline that only operates 737s, Copa has a wide variety of experiences on offer in its fleet: from its lie-flat "Dreams" product, to ancient padded recliners, to newer, slimmer recliners, which is what I got for today's flight. Copa makes the most of Panama City's location at the nexus of the Americas to offer one-stop connections between major North and South American hubs, usually at a fraction of the price compared to direct flights from larger competitors. I have always found this trade-off to be worth it, and today was no exception.

Lounge

Copa operates two lounges at their hub, Tocumen International Airport (PTY). Like the terminal itself, the lounge serving T2 is newer, larger, and much, much better than the ancient T1 and its equally-outdated lounge: unless you fly both into and out of terminal one and have a very short connection, the walk to T2 is well worth it.

Copa is generous with access to their Copa Club lounges.

Unfortunately Copa treats its lounges as a revenue generator, offering access to a plethora of lounge programs (including Priority Pass and Lounge Key) along with multiple non-Star Alliance carriers, including Air France and KLM. As a result, despite being a large lounge the T2 Copa Club is perennially-packed. Copa does have a separate “PreferAccess” line for its own business class passengers and Star Alliance Gold members, which has saved me time in the past. Thankfully since I was visiting late on New Year’s Eve, the lounge was uncharacteristically empty.

Inside you will find a manned bar with a few seats, a large dining room with seat pairs arranged across a table, and an “outdoor” patio area that overlooks the terminal below (and is also exposed to the associated noise). There’s also a small media room with televisions and comfortable chairs, a rest room with not-quite-fully-flat seats, and a children’s room.

The Christmas decorations were still up when I visited, and many staff were sporting blue Santa hats.

In the past this lounge has had abysmal food offerings: the last time I visited two years ago, the only food options were tiny cold sandwiches and bar snacks. Thankfully Copa has increased its standards, and while the selection wasn’t great, there was at least hot food on offer when I visited: dinner service included rice, chicken, potatoes, and vegetables in sauce, along with a few different dessert squares.

Not the most generous selection, but a huge improvement over the finger sandwiches Copa used to serve for "dinner".

Aside from the lack of food and the crowding, the other major issue with my last visit was horrible ventilation in the shower suites. This, unfortunately, hasn’t changed: I knew from last time that a hot shower would leave the room steamy and me sweaty, rather defeating the point. Even with a room-temperature shower there was noticeable condensation throughout the room after about five minutes. This is an amateur oversight in design.

A nice place to freshen up...unless you happen to enjoy hot showers.

Nevertheless, after having been in airports or on planes for over 12 hours by this point I appreciated the chance to freshen up. Copa limits its shower access to passengers with an onward flight with a scheduled time of four hours or more, which excludes a sizeable chunk of its route network. As a result for each of the three times that I’ve used these showers, I’ve never had to wait more than a few minutes. There’s a small desk to the left immediately after entering the lounge: reserve a shower suite here, and your name will be called over the tannoy when it’s ready.

After showering and eating, I had only a few minutes to relax before the walk over to T1.

After some hot food, a cold Balboa, and a lukewarm shower, it was time to head to my gate.

Boarding

My boarding pass indicated a boarding time of 8:10 p.m. for a 9:10 p.m. departure. From experience and common sense, it does not take an hour to board a 737…sure enough when I arrived a more reasonable 35 minutes before departure, boarding had not yet got underway. It started around half an hour before departure, and there’s no reason to be there a full hour early—especially if your flight leaves from T1 (as mine did), where seating options are limited and gates are all well over capacity. The one exception is flights to the United States and Canada, which often have a second security check at the gate (where staff take the overpriced liquids passengers purchased after the first security check).

T1 at Tocumen Airport is not a pleasant space to spend time, and there's no need to wait at the gate for a full hour before departure.

Business class passengers boarded in group one, immediately after pre-boarders. There was a separate lane for group one and another for group two, with each group being called separately.

Seat and Entertainment

Seats were wide and comfortable, with ample legroom.

Copa offers the standard 2-2 layout in business class, with a total of four rows on most of its fleet. The seat was comfortable and well-padded, with ample recline for this late-night flight where most people slept their way into 2026. The tray table folds out from the armrest, and there is a small drinks table between each seat pair with an additional pop-out drink holder.

This storage cubby, under each armrest, is perfect for books, wallets, passports, etc.

There is a small storage cubby next to each seat, perfect for phones and passports. This is also where you’ll find the universal plug assigned to each seat. There is also a USB-C charging point above this plug. Over your head you will find both an air vent and reading light.

Plenty of legroom, and in theory that QR code leads to the streaming entertainment usually on offer.

Copa has “upgraded” some of their business class seats to remove entertainment screens, previously found in the armrest. In theory entertainment can instead be streamed to your personal device, with a device holder folding down from the seatback in front of you. In practice, this did not work at all on my flight…instead, you can enjoy a rare printed in-flight magazine, available at each seat.

No entertainment, but a physical in-flight magazine (with route map) is always appreciated.

Service and Food

No pre-departure beverage service was offered, despite this being a light load (only 7/16 seats were occupied in business class). The flight attendant serving the forward cabin introduced herself to each passenger prior to pushback, and took meal orders. Copa does not offer pre-ordering, and there were only two options on tonight’s flight. I went for the beef rice with fried plantain, which came with a garden salad with choice of Italian or caesar dressing.

There was one drink service for both the warm nuts and dinner.

Every service component was combined into one interaction: passengers were asked if they would like warm nuts, a drink, their meal choice, and if they would like dessert, all at once. This accelerated pace continued into service itself: nuts came out along with each passenger’s choice of drink for dinner, and I hadn’t finished these when my meal tray was delivered. Still, a quick, hyper-efficient service is preferable to a tediously long one, and passengers who so chose had a full 75 minutes of usable sleep time on this three-hour flight.

The meal was good, even if the portion was small.

I found the meal itself to be quite good: the plantain was moist, beef was tender, and the rice was cooked perfectly. As with all my previous Copa flights though, portions were on the small side.

Meal service ended with dessert and a drink, with the lone flight attendant working business class also regularly offering refills throughout the quick service.

Somewhere over Venezuela, 2025 turned into 2026. A few minutes before midnight Panama time I asked for a glass of scotch to mark the occasion, which was promptly delivered; otherwise, everyone else slept their way into the new year.

Flying to a new country in a comfortable seat with a dram of scotch...not the worst way to start a new year.

During pre-landing safety checks the business class flight attendant personally thanked all customers for flying with Copa, which was a nice touch. Due to the security situation in Venezuela at the time (Maduro would be captured two days later) Copa schedules a generous block time for this flight, in case it needs to divert around Venezuelan airspace. We did not, and so touched down nearly an hour early at around 1:20 a.m.

Cost and Final Thoughts

I paid $641 CAD for my three-leg trip in business class from Toronto to Georgetown: from Toronto to Houston with Air Canada, onwards to Panama City with United, and then this flight with Copa. Considering Copa wanted nearly $1,100 for the one-way flight between Panama City and Georgetown alone, I thought that was pretty good value. I earned over 7,000 Aeroplan miles for this itinerary, with Copa flights in business class earning 125% of distance flown; the value of those miles made this roundabout journey cheaper, and much more comfortable, than flying direct in economy.

This was a decent flight from Copa. The lack of IFE was a letdown, but it’s nice to see Copa investing a bit more into its flagship lounge food offerings. I would have no hesitation in flying with Copa again.