Review: Copa Airlines 737-MAX 9 Business Class PTY-LAX

~ Chris Wada

The Copa Airlines 737-MAX business class cabin has a comfortable seat but lacks entertainment options and quality dining.

Our flight for this journey

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Booking

I needed to find a way to get back to Los Angeles from The Bahamas and stumbled across this particular routing of NAS-PTY-LAX on Copa using Air Canada miles. I booked this flight in January 2024, close to 11 months in advance because I needed four seats and it can be hard to find enough space for the whole family. The cost per ticket for business class was 35,000 Air Canada miles + about $150US in taxes and fees.

Compared to other options I found routing through the US in economy, it was only a small upcharge to have the experience be in business class. Plus it gives the interesting story of routing through Panama from a country that is just off the shore of Florida.

Earning Air Canada Miles

Air Canada runs a pretty useful program for North American residents. All the major transferrable credit card programs transfer their points over to Aeroplan, making it fairly easy to accrue their points. On top of that, Aeroplan also runs fairly frequent sales to purchase Air Canada miles at a reasonable cost. This all adds up to a program that makes it easy to do business, especially if you need to amass a large number of miles quickly. The following links include a referral that I may earn a commission from.

Some of the better current offers include:

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card offers 60,000 points plus a $300 travel credit for spending $4,000 in the first three months. Points transfer 1:1 to Aeroplan.

The Capital One Venture card offers a pretty decent sign-up bonus of 75,000 miles for spending $4,000 in the first three months, plus 2 miles per dollar spent. Points transfer 1:1 to Aeroplan.

Arrival and First Impressions

After leaving the Copa Club and getting some food at the nearby food court, we made our way over to Gate 203 for our flight to Los Angeles. As the flight was departing to the United States, there was extra security required at the gate. There was a single line to clear this security, not separated by class of service, but that was fine since we had to wait a few minutes anyways for the boarding process to begin.

Much like our flight out of The Bahamas, the boarding process begins an hour before departure. And once again, if you board right at the beginning, prepare for a lot of waiting around in your seat to depart.

I’m not sure why the jet bridge is made of glass. Sure, you get a nice view of the apron as you walk to the plane, but it’s uncomfortably warm in here as Panama isn’t that far away from the equator. But thankfully, we weren’t in here for too long.

We quickly found our seats, rows 3 and 4 on the starboard side of the plane. The business class eating arrangement isn’t ideal for travelers flying solo as you’d have to climb over the other passenger to get in and out. We did see some of that on this flight from other passengers. The seat also doesn’t offer much privacy, but that wasn’t a problem for us on this particular flight.

The only flight attendant working the business class cabin on this seven hour flight was Carlos, who introduced himself to us before we took off. There were no predeparture beverages on this flight though.

The Seat

I think it’s rather optimistic of Copa to install a 2-2 lie-flat business class product on a 737-MAX aircraft, as it seemed like the aisle wasn’t quite designed for seats this large. Copa calls these their Dreams seats, and they do a decent job with maintaining the theme across multiple areas.

I found the seat itself to have pretty good padding and it wasn’t showing much wear-and-tear.

There wasn’t much storage available to us at these seats, but at least we were able to store items under the footrest in front of us. The TV monitors are fixed in place but works well enough regardless of the position the chair is in. There’s no hiding what you’re watching from your seatmate though.

In between the two seats are the seat controls, which functioned properly and had easy controls for transforming into a bed and moving back to fully upright for landing.

The tray table is hidden just underneath the seat controls.

And above our heads were individual air nozzles. I like having these on flights where we need to sleep just in case the cabin is kept too warm (wasn’t the case on this flight).

Each seat had a pillow and a blanket. The pillow wasn’t too firm or two soft, and I didn’t feel like I was overheating under the blanket.

Also waiting for us at our seats was an amenity kit.

Inside the amenity kit were the usual culprits: an eyeshade, socks, dental kit with mouthwash, lotion, and lip balm. I very much liked the cloud theme they were going for (fits with the Dreams theme). Even the grip on the bottom of the sock was in the image of clouds.

Next to the headrest was some boxed water, the audio jack for headphones, and an electrical outlet.

Headphones were also waiting for us at our seats, also branded with the Dreams logo. I thought the headphones were good enough for the journey.

Char demonstrated the seat in its fully-flat mode. It would have been nice if there was a mattress pad, but it certainly wasn’t uncomfortable and I didn’t wake up with sores.

The Food

For this flight, Carlos asked us if we would prefer the beef medallions or chicken and rice. Sitting next to Char, we chose one of each. For drinks, I went with another Balboa beer and Char again opted for the POG juice (passion orange guava).

Around an hour into the flight, service started with lukewarm towels. As a parent, I can appreciate it when the towels aren’t scalding hot, but these couldn’t even be considered warm.

A full half hour after getting our towels, we were served our drink choice with some nuts and pretzels. Just a note on the order of being served: I’m used to service being conducted by row (either starting with the front or sometimes starting with the back). The service on this plane started from front to back, but also layered in with the port side of the plane going first, followed by the starboard side of the plane. This meant that our meals were served last.

Around 8PM (15 minutes after being served our drinks and over an hour and a half into the flight), we were served our meals. The meals came with a side of tomato soup and some (cold) bread.

The beef was beyond well-done and was difficult to cut with a knife and chew. Somewhat surprisingly, the potatoes that accompanied the dish were undercooked. However, I did like the tomato soup and wouldn’t have minded more of that.

The chicken had a floral taste to it, muted somewhat by the tomato sauce that covered it. I did like the flavor of the rice that sat underneath the chicken, but it was a bit dried out. Sadly, there were no kids meal options for flights on Copa that could be ordered in advance.

At 8:30PM, half an hour after being served dinner and before he cleared our dinner plates, Carlos brought out the dessert cart with two options for desserts (macarons or vanilla ice cream). A word of warning about sitting in the back, it would seem that no extra desserts are loaded on the flight, so when the dessert cart gets to you, there might not be an option on which dessert you’ll get.

Char and I each went with vanilla ice cream, which was topped off with chocolate and nuts.

Overall, I think the catering was marginally better than the lunch we had on the prior flight. Service here felt very drawn out, though I’m sure part of it is simply that it’s hard to cater a quality meal for 16 passengers with one flight attendant in a 737-MAX aircraft. That said, once again catering was one of the weaker elements of the flight.

Wi-Fi and Entertainment

Copa doesn’t currently have Wi-Fi on its flights that can be used to stay connected to the outside world. They do have a network onboard their flights that can be used to watch their entertainment system, but that’s about it. Hopefully they get internet figured out as it would be nice to stay connected to others while on their flights.

What about the entertainment options on their video screens? It’s no different than the options available on the connecting flight we had to Panama. For a seven hour flight, it would have been nice to have something a bit more, especially for the kids, but this is definitely an airline where you’ll want to bring your own entertainment onboard.

It was more entertaining to watch the map to see our path back home.

A Note on Timing of Flight

This flight wasn’t billed as a redeye, but it’s one of those late flights coming in from the East Coast that lands very late in the West Coast. Panama is in the same time zone as New York, and our flight departed just past 6PM local time, arriving just after 10PM in Los Angeles. Accounting for the three hour time change, that’s a seven hour flight. By itself, that’s plenty of time for food plus sleep. I’ve found that as an adult, these are good flights to take if you’re able to stay awake and force yourself to adapt to the local time, but there’s no way that the kids would be able to stay awake the whole journey.

What we typically do with kids (aside from avoiding these flights if reasonably possible) is to tell the kids that this is a sleeping flight–watch your shows before dinner, have dinner, and then we need to go to sleep. I’ve found that our children are pretty receptive to the plan if I tell them in advance and if the flight is long enough for them to fully enjoy it before going to sleep. I do marginally enjoy these flights more than a redeye going in the other direction as it allows us to immediately top off our sleep with most of a full night’s rest in our own beds.

Service

I think service on this flight was fine–Carlos had provided well-intentioned service–but it wasn’t remarkable. I think some of that was just simply because it’s hard to provide that service when he is by himself taking care of the business class cabin. From our flights on Copa, I think it didn’t stand out in a negative light from a service perspective against other airlines in North America, but it’s definitely not up to the service standards that you would find in Asia.

Carlos thanked us for joining us on this flight and handed out more of those delicious chocolate dart frogs. He also collected headphones as we began our descent into Los Angeles. However, he seemed to only take those headphones that weren’t in use. So by that metric, it’s a little better than what American Airlines does on their flights.

We landed a full 40 minutes early in Los Angeles.

Recommendation: I wouldn’t avoid it

If I do have the option of using Copa again, I wouldn’t be opposed to it. Panama Airport is set up for easy connections and, if you’re traveling with others, the business class seat on their MAX aircraft is pretty comfortable. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t rely on them for inflight entertainment, download the work I need to do onto my computer to remain somewhat efficient on the plane, and perhaps bring my own snacks onto the plane to help keep the kids fed.

Don’t expect a great meal on the flight–or in their lounge at Panama–and you’ll generally be OK. But, yes, it’s a bit of a shame they haven’t invested in their catering or I’d have a much different impression after this flight and would easily recommend it.

I found the price to be quite fair for what we paid. If you’re considering it for your own journey, I’d just think of it as another option in North America–perhaps not the best service or food, but it otherwise fits in, and thus I wouldn’t actively avoid it. On the flip side, I wouldn’t go well out of my way to fly them either.

Have you flown in Copa’s 737-MAX 9 aircraft before?

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