Panama City Airport Guide: Copa’s Hub of the Americas
Panama City Airport is the connecting point of the Americas, with Copa Airlines linking 80 cities through Tocumen. Here is how the hub works.
By The Aviation Hub
6 min read
Updated October 20, 2026 
Tocumen International Airport lies about 15 miles (24 km) east of the centre of Panama City, on the Pacific side of the isthmus where the Americas narrow to their thinnest point. Geography made it a crossroads, and Copa Airlines turned it into one of the most effective connecting hubs in the western hemisphere. Panama City Airport handled just under 21 million passengers in 2025, up 9 per cent in a year, almost all of them international. Two runways and two terminals serve a network that reaches from Canada to Argentina on a fleet of Boeing 737s.
Panama City Airport at a Glance
The codes are PTY and MPTO. The field sits at 41 m (135 ft) above sea level on the coastal plain beside the Pan American Highway, close to the Bay of Panama. It has two parallel runways, 03R/21L and 03L/21R, and two passenger terminals, the original Terminal 1 and the South Terminal, usually called Terminal 2, which opened fully in June 2022.
Tocumen S.A., a company owned by the Panamanian state, has run Panama City Airport since June 2003, when it took over from the Civil Aeronautics Directorate. Copa Airlines operates its hub here alongside its Colombian subsidiary, and DHL Aero Expreso and Uniworld Air Cargo base freighters on the field. Domestic flights use the smaller Albrook airport, so the total of 20.98 million passengers in 2025 is essentially all international. Opening hours and airline contacts are on the airport’s official website.
How Panama’s Airport Came to Be
Tocumen opened on 1 June 1947. The original terminal later became a cargo building when a new passenger terminal opened on the present site in the 1970s. Copa, founded in 1947 with Pan Am as a shareholder, grew slowly until Continental Airlines bought a stake in 1998 and brought hub expertise with it.
The airport saw fighting during the United States invasion of December 1989, when American paratroopers seized it on the first night. For a period it carried a different name, before the Tocumen name returned.
Copa’s Hub of the Americas strategy took off in the 2000s. A terminal expansion in 2006 added around 20,800 square metres and new gates, and traffic grew to over 16 million by 2019. The South Terminal, built by Odebrecht for about $780 million, was inaugurated in April 2019 and began handling flights in June 2022 after pandemic delays.
Runways at Panama City Airport
The main runway, 03R/21L, is 3,050 m (10,006 ft) long and 45 m wide, surfaced in concrete. It handles almost all commercial traffic and carries a Category I instrument landing system on the 03R end. The parallel runway, 03L/21R, is 2,682 m (8,800 ft) long and 61 m wide, asphalt surfaced, and is used mainly by cargo and private flights and as a relief runway during peak banks.
Winds are light for most of the year this close to the equator, and the usual flow has aircraft landing on 03R from the south over the bay and departing to the north east. The wet season from May to December brings towering afternoon thunderstorms that can close the field for an hour at a time and ripple through Copa’s tightly timed connection banks.
Copa runs its hub in waves, with several banks a day in which dozens of 737s arrive within an hour, swap passengers and leave again. The single main runway copes because almost every movement is a narrow body, but the queue at the holding point during a departure bank is one of the sights of Panama City Airport.
Terminals and Airlines
Terminal 1 is the original building, extended several times, with around 28 gates arranged along two piers and a handful of remote stands. Copa uses most of them, running its connecting operation across the north and south piers so that passengers walk between gates without clearing immigration. American, Delta, United, Avianca, Aeromexico, Iberia and Turkish Airlines also fly here. Terminal 1 has a Copa Club lounge and the independent The Lounge Panama, which opened in January 2019.
The South Terminal adds 20 gates in a long glass fronted building to the south east, linked to Terminal 1 by a walkway. Copa spread into it when it opened, easing the crush in the older building during the connection banks.
Duty free shopping is extensive because Panama is a low tax trading hub, and the terminals are busiest in the early morning and early evening when the banks overlap.
Routes and Destinations
Bogota is the busiest route with just over 1 million passengers in 2024, followed by Miami at around 790,000, Medellin at 730,000, San Jose in Costa Rica at 692,000 and Punta Cana at 669,000. Lima, Cancun, Sao Paulo, Guayaquil and Santiago each carried more than 549,000. Copa serves around 80 destinations in some 30 countries, and its network is thickest in Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean.
The long haul operation is small but growing. Air France flies to Paris, KLM to Amsterdam, Iberia to Madrid and Turkish Airlines to Istanbul, the last at around 6,700 miles (10,800 km) the longest route from Tocumen. Emirates announced a Dubai flight in 2015 that would have been the longest non stop route in the world, but it never launched. United flies from Houston and Newark, Delta from Atlanta and American from Miami.
Traffic is spread evenly through the year because the hub depends on connections rather than local demand. Cargo is significant, with DHL’s Latin American hub running Boeing 757 and 767 freighters through the night.
Getting to and from Panama City Airport
Panama Metro reached the airport in March 2023 with the opening of Aeropuerto station on a branch of Line 2. Line 2 runs to San Miguelito, where Line 1 continues into the city centre and the banking district. The total journey takes around 45 minutes to an hour and costs well under $1, making it the cheapest sensible option by a wide margin.
By road, the Corredor Sur toll expressway links the airport to the city in 25 to 40 minutes outside rush hour. Official airport taxis charge around $30 to $35 (roughly £23 to £27) to downtown, with Uber a little cheaper from a designated pick up area. Traffic on the Corredor Sur at peak times can double journey times.
A few hotels have opened beside the airport for passengers on early connections. Multi storey and surface parking sits in front of Terminal 1, with more at the South Terminal.
Spotting and Photography
Panama City Airport is not easy for spotters, but the terminals help. The large windows of the South Terminal and the piers of Terminal 1 look onto the aprons where dozens of Copa Boeing 737-800s and 737 MAX 9s park nose in during a bank.
Arrivals come in over the bay onto 03R for most of the year. Besides Copa’s 737s, look for Air France, KLM, Turkish and Iberia wide bodies and the DHL freighters.
Panama City Airport’s perimeter is patrolled and photography from outside the fence attracts attention. Stay on public roads, be ready to explain yourself to police and keep cameras inside the terminal unless you are well clear of the fence.
What Comes Next
The South Terminal doubled gate capacity and gives the airport room to grow towards 30 million passengers. Copa continues to add destinations, with Porlamar in Venezuela due to start in November 2026, and is taking delivery of more 737 MAX aircraft. Further taxiway and apron work is planned to speed up the banks.
The constraints are competition and the economy rather than concrete. Avianca in Bogota and the Mexican and American carriers all want the same connecting traffic, and Copa’s advantage rests on punctuality and Panama’s visa policy. Thunderstorms and a single main runway are the operational limits.
Panama City Airport will remain the connecting machine of Latin America for as long as Copa keeps its banks running on time. See how it compares with other hubs on the Airports of the World map.
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