Welcome to the Panama Weekly News Roundup! Copa is having a banner year so far in 2015, adding new flights to David, and partnering with a major Brazilian airline. Panama is quickly becoming a destination for electronic music festivals, and new stats indicate a drop in overall inflation for 2014. Here’s the latest.
Brazil’s Gol, Panama’s Copa sign flight-sharing agreement.
In what seems to be weekly news, Copa is making moves again to expand their reach in the Americas. This time, they’ve signed a deal with Brazil’s Gol to help expand flights into Brazil and other South American countries, and create a partnership to bolster existing hubs in the region.
“This alliance will include cooperation on all Copa flights in the Americas through its hub in Panama City, to and from Brazil, and the connection in Brazil to the 54 Brazilian destinations operated by Gol,” the carriers said in a statement released in Sao Paulo.The alliance is still awaiting approval from Brazil’s regulatory agencies, Gol said. The agreement covers both companies’ frequent-flyer programs.
“This alliance expands Copa’s presence in Brazil, which includes direct flights from Panama to eight Brazilian cities,” Copa Airline’s director for government relations and alliances, Pablo de la Guardia, said.
Source: Fox News Latino
Panama annual inflation rate cools in December, down in 2014.
Fears of inflation have been largely cooled recently as the 2014 numbers have come in, and they are lower than expected. Although the new president’s government may take claim for this, most of it can be attributed to oil prices falling, and a reduction in overall prices of consumer goods in the country.
Consumer prices in Panama dropped in December on lower gasoline and transportation costs, helping push the annual inflation rate further down, the statistics office said on Tuesday.
Consumer prices in the Central American nation contracted 0.4 percent in December compared to November, according to the data. Versus a year ago, annual inflation rose 2.6 percent in 2014 down from a 4 percent rate in 2013, the office said.
Source: Reuters
Is Panama the Next Hot Spot for EDM Festivals?
EDM, the abbreviation for Electronic Dance Music, is one of the world’s hottest entertainment commodities these days. Its festivals are huge moneymakers and can fill stadiums with concertgoers, as well as attracting hundreds of thousands in tourism revenue. Recently, Panama has been popping up on the map for these types of festivals, and the trend looks to continue as they grow in popularity.
Soon, enterprising EDM entrepreneurs began looking even farther south — and settled on Panama. A barometer for the country’s progress is the third annual The Day After Festival, taking place Jan. 17-19 in Panama City, with headliners including Martin Garrix, Tiesto, Afrojack and Hardwell. The event is a joint venture between SFX-owned, Puerto Rico-based Disco Donnie Presents (DDP) and leading local event planner Showpro, which produces up to 15 annual large-scale music and sporting events.
Source: Billboard
Copa Now Flies to David: Cheap domestic airfare from the country’s biggest carrier
With the influx of tourism and business in the western Panamanian province of Chiriqui, it was only a matter of time before Copa broke into the market. In what has been a great start to 2015 so far, Copa Airlines has started twice daily flights from Tocumen Airport (PTY) to David, the capital of Chiriqui province. These are the first domestic flights from Copa in nearly half a century, and will help add competition to the routes previously dominated by Air Panama.
While on the surface it just looks like a great way to make prices more competitive, there’s actually a lot more to the PTY-David Copa flight that’s at stake. The main reason, from an expat or tourist perspective, that a Copa-run David flight is important is that it will allow international flyers to bypass transferring airports in Panama City, and connect straight through to David. This will save hours, and lots of headaches if you have a long flight.
So, let’s say you’re headed to David or one of its surrounding towns from New York. With Air Panama, you’d need to fly into Panama City with one ticket, go through customs/immigration, cross the city to Albrook, and coordinate a new flight on a new carrier to David. With Copa flying there, you bypass this step entirely. A PTY to David Copa flight could save you 3-5 hours of travel time, and about $100 in travel expenses. Even better, as they’re new to the market, the ticket price is also cheaper.
