Cayman Airways to resume Panama route

Eight years after discontinuing the route, Cayman Airways will relaunch direct flights from Grand Cayman to Panama City from 26 June this year, in a bid to tap into the Latin American market.

Economy-class tickets on the twice-a-week flights, after tax, are expected to cost US$390. The flights will operate on Mondays and Thursdays, arriving around noon in Panama to link up with connecting flights to other destinations in the region, Fabian Whorms, president and CEO Cayman Airways, said at a press briefing on Monday announcing the new route.

“This puts us right in that sweet spot for connections … inbound to Cayman from Panama, and connections for passengers leaving Cayman going elsewhere and connecting in Panama,” he said.

He added, “Serving Panama is not just about serving Panama. Tocumen Airport is one of the best hubs in the world when it comes to connectivity and in-transit travel.”

Cayman Airlines is partnering with Panama’s national airline Copa, which uses Tocumen as its hub and which is affiliated with United Airlines. “Their connectivity throughout Central and South America, Latin America in general, is phenomenal,” he said.

Whorms noted that as many European carriers use Panama as a hub in Latin America, the new route will offer passengers from Europe another option to travel to Cayman.

Original Panama route discontinued in 2015

The airline previously ran a seasonal summer route direct to Panama, from 2012 to 2015, which Whorms insisted had not been a loss-maker, as he explained the rationale behind relaunching it.

“All of those flights covered what we call our ‘variable costs’, which meant they made a contribution to our fixed costs or overheads. So those flights were not loss-making flights. We are not going into this venture … thinking about potential loss [on that route]. We are very confident that it will cover its costs again,” he said.

He explained that the airline stopped flying to Panama eight years ago when it launched a new Dallas route and needed the 747-300 aircraft it had been operating to and from Panama to ensure “reliability and redundancy within our fleet in order to make Dallas successful”, as it was a strategically important tourism route.

Since then, Cayman Airways has stopped flying direct to Dallas, as Whorms said other carriers had begun operating on that route so the airline looked to other destinations “in order to help drive tourism within the Cayman Islands”.

Reducing flights to Havana

In order to facilitate the new Panama route, Cayman Airways is reducing the number of flights it operates on its Grand Cayman-Havana route.

“This is giving us the extra available capacity that we can use towards a flight to Panama,” Whorms said.

At one point recently, CAL was flying to Havana five times a week as demand had picked up, but that has tapered off somewhat now, he said, and currently, the airline flies four times a week to Havana.

That will be reduced to twice a week, at weekends, Whorms said.

Medical tourism target

He added that as well as leisure tourists, passengers seeking medical care in Cayman are also among the target market for the Panama route.

“Cayman is a very developed country when it comes to health services,” he said. “Health tourism is something that is quite significant and is growing more and more all the time.

“We do know that we get a lot of health tourism from Latin America and Central America, and we expect, with this service, we are creating an environment that allow that sector to grow.”

Business hub

Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan, who also spoke at the press briefing, said Panama City was a hub through which passengers and cargo from Central and South America could pass on their way to Cayman.

As well as leisure travellers, Bryan said the proximity of the Colon Free Zone to Panama City may make the route a popular one for business travellers.

Noting that the free-trade zone of Colon, which is located on Panama’s Atlantic side and which is the largest free port in the Americas, is less than 50 miles from Panama City, he said, “It is dedicated to re-exporting a wide variety of goods and merchandise from Panama to Latin American and the Caribbean.

“There are more than 3,000 established companies in the zone, representing an attractive option for travellers from a trade and business perspective.”

He added that there were several Caymanian companies that conduct business through Panama.

He said in 2022, 6,498 visitors from Latin America came to Cayman. “With the direct service available to travellers, we are anticipating seeing more positive growth from this region,” he said.

Tourism visas

Nationals from several Latin American countries currently require tourism visas before they can enter Cayman, including Panama’s neighbours Colombia, Nicaragua and Honduras.

In light of the new route to Panama, Bryan said he had discussed the issue of making changes for visa requirements with Deputy Premier Chris Saunders, who is in charge of border control matters, and the office of Governor Martyn Roper, from a national security perspective, “so they are aware that this is my want and my wish”.

But he noted that there are also several large South American countries, such as Brazil and Argentina, that do not require tourist visas for Cayman, making it easy for them to access Cayman via the Panama City hub.