Key Takeaways
- Tocumen is the Hub of the Americas. Panama City's Tocumen International (PTY) serves around 92 regularly-served nonstop destinations, far more than every other Panamanian airport combined. It is the home hub of Copa Airlines and one of Latin America's great connecting points between North and South America.
- One mega-hub, then a string of small fields. Beyond Tocumen, Panama's airports are modest. Albrook, in Panama City, runs the domestic network, while David, Bocas del Toro and a handful of regional strips handle short hops within the country.
- Unusually strong links to the United States. Tocumen alone flies nonstop to around 15 US cities, far more than most countries its size, because Copa uses Panama as a bridge between US gateways and the rest of the Americas.
- Albrook feeds the islands and the highlands. Marcos A. Gelabert Airport (PAC), almost always called Albrook, is Air Panama's domestic hub for Bocas del Toro, the Chiriqui highlands and the Pacific islands.
- We rank by regularly-served routes, not raw counts. Tourism and connecting traffic can inflate raw nonstop totals, so we rank by regularly-served destinations, routes flown often enough to count as scheduled service, for a truer picture of each airport's network.
Panama is the narrow isthmus that joins Central and South America, and its place on the map shapes its airports as much as anything on the ground. The same geography that made the Panama Canal a hinge of world trade has turned the country into one of aviation’s great crossroads. A single airport, Tocumen, acts as a connecting hub for the whole hemisphere, while the rest of the network stays small and mostly domestic.
Below we map and rank Panama’s airports by the number of nonstop destinations each one serves, drawn from live route data on AirportRoutes. We rank by regularly-served destinations, routes flown often enough to count as scheduled service, rather than raw nonstop totals. The figures come from observed flight data, a large sample rather than a complete published timetable, so treat them as a guide to relative connectivity rather than official totals. One fact dominates everything else: Tocumen, home of Copa Airlines, towers over every other airport in the country.
Which Panama airports have direct flights to the US?
Only one Panamanian airport has nonstop flights to the United States, but it does so on a scale that dwarfs most countries this size: Tocumen International (PTY) in Panama City. From here, Copa Airlines, United and American fly nonstop to around 15 US cities, including Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, Houston, New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
This reach is no accident. Copa Airlines has built Tocumen into its Hub of the Americas, a connecting point where flights from across the United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Latin America meet and exchange passengers. For travellers heading from a US city to smaller destinations in Central America, the Caribbean or northern South America, a single connection in Panama is often the quickest routing. None of Panama’s other airports, all of them domestic or short-haul regional fields, has scheduled US service.
Ranked
Major Airports in Panama by Nonstop Destinations
Ranked by regularly-served nonstop destinations, busiest first.
| Airport | IATA | Nonstop | Region |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Panama City (Tocumen) | PTY | 92 | Capital, Pacific side |
| 2. Panama City (Albrook) | PAC | 6 | Capital, domestic hub |
| 3. David | DAV | 3 | Chiriqui, far west |
| 4. Bocas del Toro | BOC | 2 | Caribbean islands, north-west |
| 5. Changuinola | CHX | 1 | Bocas del Toro province, north-west |
| 6. Chitre | CTD | 1 | Azuero Peninsula, central |
A closer look at Panama’s airports
✈️ Panama City, Tocumen (PTY)
Tocumen International Airport sits about 24 km east of central Panama City and is, by an enormous margin, the busiest airport in the country and one of the most important in Latin America. It is the home base and sole hub of Copa Airlines, Panama’s flag carrier and a Star Alliance member, and its expanded Terminal 2 opened in 2022 to handle the airport’s steady growth.
Serving the capital and acting as a hub for the entire hemisphere, PTY reaches around 92 regularly-served nonstop destinations, a genuine intercontinental network spanning North, Central and South America, the Caribbean and a handful of European cities. Copa’s model, branded the Hub of the Americas, funnels passengers from dozens of cities through Panama, which is why a country of just over four million people supports such a far-reaching airport.
Main airlines: Copa Airlines, United, American Airlines, Avianca, Wingo. See the full route map for PTY on AirportRoutes →
🛫 Panama City, Albrook (PAC)
Marcos A. Gelabert International Airport, almost always called Albrook after the former US air base on whose grounds it sits, lies just west of central Panama City, far closer to downtown than Tocumen. It is the hub of the domestic network and the base of Air Panama, the country’s main regional carrier.
Serving Panama City’s short-haul traffic, PAC reaches a small set of regularly-served destinations, almost all of them domestic flights to Bocas del Toro, David, the Pacific islands and other towns awkward to reach by road. Albrook handles the propeller and regional flights that knit the country together, leaving the long-haul and connecting business to Tocumen across town.
Main airlines: Air Panama. See the full route map for PAC on AirportRoutes →
⛰️ David (DAV)
Enrique Malek International Airport serves David, the capital of Chiriqui province and Panama’s third-largest city, close to the border with Costa Rica in the far west. It is the main gateway to the cool highland town of Boquete, a magnet for coffee farms, hiking and a large community of foreign retirees.
Serving western Panama, DAV reaches a handful of regularly-served destinations, chiefly frequent domestic flights to Panama City on Air Panama and Copa, which give Chiriqui a fast link to the capital and, through Tocumen, to the wider Copa network. It has seen on-and-off international service over the years but works today mainly as a busy domestic airport.
Main airlines: Air Panama, Copa Airlines. See the full route map for DAV on AirportRoutes →
🏝️ Bocas del Toro (BOC)
Bocas del Toro’s airport sits on Isla Colon, the main island of the Bocas archipelago on Panama’s Caribbean coast near the Costa Rican border. It is the air gateway to one of the country’s most popular beach and diving destinations, a cluster of palm-fringed islands known for surf, reefs and overwater cabins.
Serving the islands, BOC runs a small number of regularly-served routes: short domestic hops to Panama City on Air Panama plus a cross-border link to San Jose in Costa Rica, which makes the archipelago easy to reach from either country without a long boat-and-bus journey.
Main airlines: Air Panama, Sansa. See the full route map for BOC on AirportRoutes →
🌾 Changuinola (CHX)
Captain Manuel Nino Airport serves Changuinola, a banana-growing town on the mainland of Bocas del Toro province, close to the Costa Rican border in the far north-west. It is a small regional field serving an area built around plantation agriculture.
Changuinola runs essentially a single regularly-served route, a domestic link to Panama City on Air Panama, giving the north-western corner of the country a direct air connection to the capital that would otherwise be a long drive over the mountains.
Main airlines: Air Panama. See the full route map for CHX on AirportRoutes →
🌅 Chitre (CTD)
Alonso Valderrama Airport serves Chitre, the main town of the Azuero Peninsula on Panama’s central Pacific coast. The Azuero is the country’s folklore heartland, known for its festivals, rural traditions and Spanish-colonial towns.
Chitre runs a single regularly-served route, a short domestic flight to Panama City on Air Panama, a quick alternative to the long drive along the peninsula. Like Panama’s other small fields, it depends on the capital and, through it, on Tocumen for any onward travel.
Main airlines: Air Panama. See the full route map for CTD on AirportRoutes →
What about Panama Pacifico?
Panama City actually has a third airport, Panama Pacifico International (BLB), built on the grounds of the former US Howard Air Force Base just west of the city across the canal. It has been used as a low-cost gateway, including by Copa’s budget brand Wingo for some regional and international flights, though its scheduled passenger service has come and gone over the years. It does not appear in the route data above because it carried no regularly-served scheduled flights in the sample; the overwhelming majority of Panama’s international and connecting traffic still runs through Tocumen.
Airport rankings, nonstop-destination counts, served regions, airline lists and connections are drawn from live AirportRoutes route data (observed AeroAPI flight data, a sample rather than a complete published schedule; we use the regularly-served figure, which filters one-off observations). Airport history and notable facts are cross-checked against the cited references. The ranked map is a Mappr original.
Primary Data Source:
- AirportRoutes: major airports & routes, Panama – Live route data: per-airport nonstop destinations, served cities, airlines and connections.
Reference:
- Wikipedia: Tocumen International Airport and other Panamanian airports – Airport history, location and notable facts referenced in the per-airport sections.
- Copa Airlines – Panama's flag carrier; background on the Hub of the Americas connecting network.
- Locator maps: Google Maps / Google Static Maps – Per-airport location maps with airplane markers, generated via Google Static Maps.
Image Sources:
- Map by Mappr – Map of major airports in Panama, a Mappr original built from AirportRoutes data and Natural Earth boundaries.
🌍 More maps & data for Panama
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