Copa will offer direct link from Montreal to its Tocumen airport hub.

Panama’s Copa Airlines will launch service between Montreal and the Central American country on June 3 with four non-stop flights weekly.

The flights will accommodate the growing affinity Quebec tourists have for Panama, and will also position Panama City’s Tocumen International Airport as a connection hub to transfer passengers on to Copa’s 55 destination cities in Latin America, airline chief executive officer Pedro Heilbron said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Montreal is the third North American destination Copa has launched recently, after Boston and Toronto.

Fernando Fondevila, Copa’s commercial regional manager for North America, said that it will be the only non-stop service between Montreal and Latin America.

Heilbron said that the flights will be just in time to serve traffic going to soccer’s World Cup, which starts June 12 in Rio de Janeiro — one of the cities Copa connects to.

Flight 423 will leave Montreal at 9:33 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, while flight 422 is scheduled to leave Tocumen at 6 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturdays.

The five-and-a-half-hour flights arrive in Panama at 2:22 p.m. and in Montreal at 12:49 a.m.

Pierre-Paul Pharand, vice-president (airport operations and air services development) at Aéroports de Montréal, said that the flights will bring to 131 the number of destinations served directly by Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Pierre Bellerose, vice-president (research and public relations) for Tourism Montréal, called the future links “important and delightful news.”

Such connections have a symbiotic effect, he added: business travellers to Montreal eventually bring in tourists and vice versa.

Heilbron could not say which carrier is most likely to be affected by the 500 seats per week on Boeing 737-700 NGs that his four flights will offer.

Marc Croteau, deputy associate minister of Quebec’s Department of Tourism, said that no assessment has been made of the number of jobs the flights could create, nor of their economic spinoffs.

“But it was a success in Toronto and Boston,” he noted, “and it brings in convention business.”

Heilbron said that prices from Montreal “will be competitive,” but could not be more precise.

Passengers who connect to other cities in Latin America will be offered a 72-hour stopover in Panama for US$40 per person — and a free 30-day health insurance card.

Heilbron heralded the merits of the shopping centre at Tocumen airport, “where we literally have to chase down shopping passengers to tell them to get on the flight. … And the Panama Canal is only about 40 minutes away.”

Founded in 1947, Copa is a Star Alliance partner and carries more than 10 million passengers a year — and is growing fast in Latin America.