Flying Avianca from Bogota to Panama City 🌎✈️

17
Jun 24
1

Flying Avianca from Bogota to Panama City ✈️

Departing from Europe, travelers can choose from several flight options to reach their final destination in Panama City. Whether you opt for a direct flight to Panama City or a layover in Colombia, this route offers a blend of transcontinental convenience and adventure.

Avianca Airlines operate flights connecting Bogotá, Colombia, to Panama City, Panama, with departures from Bogotá El Dorado International Airport (BOG) and arrivals at Panama City Tocumen International Airport (PTY).

The average flight time between these two cities is approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes.

Highlights

Bogotá Airport, Colombia

The final leg of our 3-flight journey from Amsterdam to Panama was an Avianca flight from Bogotá, Columbia to Panama Tocumen Airport. This involved more security screening, but thankfully not as inanely intense as in Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

Our arrival at Bogota airport was definitely a ‘habla español‘ wake-up call. Almost all gate information was in Spanish. Even the odd announcements in English were so difficult to understand that they might as well have been in Spanish.

From Bogotá to Panama Tocumen Airport

However, apart from the usual South American bustle, the airport lounges were clean, modern and efficient.

Hotel Options in Bogotá

Flying with Avianca

Avianca is the largest airline in Colombia, and the second largest in Latin America. Our short hop with Avianca to ‘Ciudad de Panama’ was comfortable and faultless. In addition to seat numbers, Avianca assigned group numbers to passengers, to facilitate the boarding process.

Why on earth don’t all airlines do this?

Inflight, we were served with a delicious warm cheese & mushroom pasti with a glass of white wine. No complaints here.

Avianca to Panama Tocumen Airport

Fly Avianca from Bogota

From the Airport to Panama City

A few days before arriving in Panama City, we had arranged – and confirmed by email – a hotel pickup from the airport.

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The cost would be $35 – a little higher than the standard rate. However it would spare us the effort of dealing in Spanish with taxi drivers after 18 hours of travelling.

As it turned out, there was nobody waiting for us in the Arrivals lounge. It was 01:30 am. There were plenty of taxi touts stalking the terminal, but almost all the booths were closed.

At this time of night, a taxi is the only option.

We finally located a guy in uniform with a walkie-talkie who pointed out a fixed-price list of taxi fares on the wall of an empty booth. It would cost us $30 to travel to anywhere in the city center.

The taxi we were offered was a spacious and comfortable white van, and the driver knew where our hotel was located.

To Panama City from the Airport

Getting to the Airport from Panama City

For our return to Tocumen airport 3 weeks later, we’d considered saving ourselves some dollars by travelling to the airport by bus, using our metrocard.

However, it is impractical lugging rucksacks on city buses. Since the return taxi fare was a bit cheaper ($25), we decided to go with the easy option.

On our return to Tocumen airport, we also had a re-think concerning the tropical plant cuttings we had been collecting. I was a little concerned that customs might mistake our little green roots for marijuana plants, or something equally jailable.

Since I didn’t fancy experiencing a true ‘Sona-style‘ Panamanian prison, we dumped our plant and shell collection in the bathroom before going through customs.

Hotel Options in Panama City