Copa Airlines
flag-carrier airline of Panama
Compañía Panameña de Aviación, S.A., branded as Copa Airlines, is the flag carrier of Panama and a member of the Star Alliance. It is headquartered in Panama City, with its main hub at Tocumen International Airport. The airline is owned by Copa Holdings, which also owns Colombian airline AeroRepública, which operates under the brands Wingo and Copa Airlines Colombia.
Copa was founded in 1947 and it began domestic operations to three cities in Panama shortly afterwards. The airline abandoned its domestic operations in 1980, in favor of international flights. In 1998, Copa formed a partnership with Continental Airlines, adopting a similar brand image.
History
Inauguration
On June 21, 1944, Panamanian investors joined forces with Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) to launch Compañía Panameña de Aviación (Spanish for 'Panamanian Aviation Company'), soon known simply by its acronym, Copa. Pan Am took a 32% stake in the company. Operations started on August 15, 1947, with three Douglas C-47 aircraft on domestic routes in Panama. The 1960s marked Copa's entry into the international arena, offering flights to Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Colombia.
The public source identifies “Copa Airlines” as flag-carrier airline of Panama. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Copa, Airlines and flag-carrier.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q849404. VIAF identifies the subject as 149125494. The Library of Congress control number is n2003097655. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1980, 1998 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Copa Airlines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.