LA PRENSA/Archivo
25/11/2014 - Copa Airlines is seeking permission from the Civil Aviation Authority to establish flights from Tocumen International Airport to Enrique Malek Terminal in David, Chiriquí.
The airline requested 14 flights a week, two per day. This would compete with Air Panama, which currently has a monopoly on the domestic market after the departure of Aeroperlas two years ago.
During the public hearing, Air Panama officials said approving the request would jeopardize their jobs.
Air Panama flies between David and Albrook three times daily.
This would be the second domestic market where Copa has operations. It also offers domestic service in Colombia.
Replies
Can I borrow your police officers when I need to get away from the keyboard and do other things?
However...please allow me to invoke some
Actually, Baja Boquete is surrounded by mountains with only a narrow small river canyon exiting it. And if you derive from Volcan up the mountain to the Cerro Punta Valley, you will see an even more dramatic example of this.
Googling "surrounded on three sides" with quotation marks will get 399,000 hits, so "surrounded on three sides" is pretty common - e.g. accepted "colloquial" English - and I reserve the right to use it.
Apparently the President asked Copa to connect David with Tocumen.
''Voceros de Copa Airlines señalaron que la aerolínea tomó la decisión de incursionar en el mercado local luego que el presidente Juan Carlos Varela le solicitará que conectara a la provincia de Chiriquí con el hub aéreo de Tocumen y los 69 destinos donde opera la aerolínea.'' source La Prensa
Now, Copa still has to prove that Copa is 60% owned by Panamanians in order to operate domestic flights , as stipulated by art. 79 , Law 21 of 2003.
''En la audiencia pública que realizó la AAC para completar el trámite burocrático antes de expedir el permiso a favor de Copa Airlines, Humberto Chavarría, apoderado legal de Air Panamá, exigió que la empresa demuestre que el 60% de sus acciones está en manos de inversionistas panameños.
“Copa Holdings ( tenedora de las acciones de Copa Airlines) tiene una estructura accionaria compleja y debe demostrar que cumple con todos los requisitos que establece la Ley 21 de 2003 que regula el sector aeronáutico”.
El artículo 79 de la Ley 21 indica que las acciones de la empresa que brinde el transporte aéreo en el mercado doméstico debe estar en manos de nacionales durante todo el tiempo que dure la concesión.'' source La Prensa
Tough times ahead for Air Panama!!!
There will always be regional travelers. I see a lot of people who commute to PC via Air Panama on a daily and weekly basis. These folks aren't going to start driving just because they fixed the highway. Maybe AP will have to cut cut their flights to two per day, but there will still be a lot of demand to go to Albrook from David, myself included.
I moved here in early 2012 from the small town of Sebastopol in Northern California, population 7,500. I was about 50 miles north of San Francisco, and eight miles west of Santa Rosa (population 175,000 and the Sonoma County seat). The rugged Pacific coast was 15 miles to my west, and there was nothing but wild, open desolate country with lots of rugged ranches, some wine grape vineyards, giant redwoods and douglas fir forests along the coast,. There are a few small towns to the North along U.S. Highway 101 - or Interstate 5 a bit to the east - but it was 540 miles to the north until you reached the next big town - Eugene, Oregon, population 160,000, and the second biggest city in that state. .
I like here what I liked there - living in a small town with an easy drive - and spectacular views - to a good-sized city.
And although Panama City is a fairly long drive, it's nice to have a world-class city not too far away. Just as in Northern Coastal California, here I am surrounded by wild, open country including parks, ranches and farms, and a countryside dotted with small villages.
In Sonoma County, I could see 4,000' Mt. St Helena rising above the other peaks, and here we have 11,400' Volcan Baru which dominates the skyline even as you leave the David Airport on a clear day.
So yes, there are suburbs here, and they will be growing. Huge subdivisions are being built between Los Algarrobos and Dolega, with billboards advertising even more of them. There's more new housing being built from Dolega through Alto Boquete to Bajo Boquete, but not on such a big scale.
Protected by the rugged mountains that surround it on three sides - with only one main road following the Rio Caldera canyon out of town - Bajo Boquete itself cannot be expanded very much, although there are plenty of vacant lots for sale for infilling. And being on town on a dead-end road means that they may jam ever-more people in town for fiestas and events, but this place will likely always be a destination, and not a stop along the way to somewhere else.
David to Boquete will be classic "strip development", but there will be plenty of open country nearby. It's not going to be like the big population centers that I am very familiar with, including Northern California's Bay Area with it's 7.5 population, and the greater Los Angeles area with its crushing population of over 16.5 million people.
Do not forget David is growing very fast and massive investment is going there too. Once the highway is finished the supply route to and from David will be greatly enhanced. Boquete and the entire route from David to Boquete will be a bedroom community.
As did the folks from the Torrijos government.
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