As de­mand for trav­el to Pana­ma con­tin­ues to grow, Pana­man­ian car­ri­er Co­pa Air­lines plans to in­tro­duce ad­di­tion­al ser­vice be­tween Pana­ma and T&T. Start­ing Ju­ly 7th, the air­line will in­tro­duce two ad­di­tion­al af­ter­noon fre­quen­cies on Mon­days and Fri­days. In Au­gust, the air­line will in­tro­duce a third ad­di­tion­al af­ter­noon fre­quen­cy on Wednes­days, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of week­ly flights up to 10. The air­line will use its Boe­ing 737-800 and small­er Boe­ing 737-700 fleet for these ser­vices, al­though this can be ad­just­ed based on de­mand.

Pana­ma has been a pop­u­lar con­nec­tion point for trav­ellers us­ing Co­pa Air­lines’ ex­ten­sive net­work at Toc­u­men In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (PTY), but the air­line has al­so seen suc­cess with its stopover pro­gram. The stopover pro­gram al­lows tick­et­ed pas­sen­gers to stay in Pana­ma for up to sev­en days with no ad­di­tion­al air­fare costs. Ac­cord­ing to Co­pa of­fi­cials, many use it to shop in Pana­ma.

While Pana­ma may be known for shop­ping, Pana­ma’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Diomedes Her­a­clio Car­les Cleghorn, tells Guardian Me­dia his coun­try is more than just a shop­ping des­ti­na­tion. With 16 free trade zones in Pana­ma, Cleghorn is look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­mer­cial part­ner­ships. “As every­body states, when I see them is that they love the shop­ping, but the shop­ping brings oth­er things. You could prob­a­bly have a free zone here…and a part­ner­ship with the biggest com­pa­nies [in Pana­ma] that can help,” he said.