I’m back in the office after a whirl wind trip to Central America. Panama City was surprising, unique and I want to go back to spend longer exploring it. Copa Airlines were charming, immensely professional and clearly focussed on achieving continued success in a growing market.

The journey involved 8 and 6 hour overnight transits through New York’s JFK airport which were not uncomfortable due to the 24 hour coffee shop facilities in Terminal 4 where the COPA flights arrive and depart from. Describing Panama City is difficult as it has so many sides - the old town is like a Caribbean pirate film set, complete with colourful street-side characters but the new town is just vertical with dozens of skyscrapers of immense height growing inorganically from a noisy and dynamic cityscape. I loved it.

Copa Airlines are a very modern purposeful airline housed in a very modern purposeful building in the city’s new just out of town business district. With an expanding fleet of Boeings and Embraers their target market is commercial traffic across Latin America using Panama City as a hum to connect second and third cities as well as capitals.

Frequency is key with up to 4 waves of connections arriving and departing ther home airport every day. Judging from everything I saw and heard it is clear that they serve this market incredibly well and are benefitting from an increasingly good reputation for incredible on0time performance.

From New York to Panama in Coach the flights were good, pushing back early and despite almost full loads excellent on-board service. On the way back the unexpected pleasure of an upgrade to business class brought a fabulous three course meal, a big leather armchair of a seat and the sort of personal service I imagine you get on a private jet. To and from New York British Airways were also good, better than expected and better than the flight of similar duration I experienced with Virgin earlier this month.

Nothing specific stands out as why it was a better experience, the style was a little more formal than Virgin, the food a little better, the seat a little more comfortable and surprisingly a better in-flight entertainment system than Virgin’s, all combining to a more relaxing flight. A great experience but its good to be home.