Headquartered in Panama City, Copa Airlines is the national airline of Panama and a member of Star Alliance. This airline is a major operator of routes between the United States and many Latin American countries. Plus, it operates many short-haul flights around Central and South America through its low-cost subsidiary Wingo. And, although Copa Airline and Wingo only operate flight routes in the Americas, through Copa’s airline partners, you can book flights almost anywhere in the world.

Copa Airlines has its own frequent flyer program, known as ConnectMiles, that allows you to earn reward miles in a variety of ways and then redeem those miles for flights on Copa Airlines and its partner airlines. One of the best parts about the Copa Airlines ConnectMiles program is that it still uses a series of fixed award charts to price Copa Airlines-operated award flights as well as partner award flights, which means you can often find outsized value per mile through this program.

However, the process of searching for and booking award flights through the Copa Airlines ConnectMiles program can sometimes be confusing. So, in this article, we’re going to explain the step-by-step process of booking an award flight with ConnectMiles. We’ll also cover how to become a member of the program and how to save up enough points for an award flight.

Joining Copa Airlines ConnectMiles

Before you can start earning or redeeming miles through ConnectMiles, you’ll need to be a member of the program. To enroll in the ConnectMiles program, visit the Copa Airlines website and click the “Log in” button in the top-right corner of the homepage.

Copa Airlines website

When you see the page asking for your account credentials, click the “Sign up” button beneath the credentials field.

Copa Airlines website - Login/Sign up page

After that, you’ll need to enter some personal information to create your ConnectMiles account, including your name, date of birth, nationality, email address and a password. Finally, you can choose which promotional emails you want to receive from Copa Airlines ConnectMiles by checking or unchecking the boxes near the bottom of the page.

Checkbox options for receiving news, offers, and data sharing consent on the ConnectMiles registration page

If you don’t want to receive any promotional emails from Copa Airlines or its partners (which we recommend), uncheck all of the boxes. Finally, you’ll click the “Create an account” button at the bottom of the page to complete your registration.

You’ll then receive a ConnectMiles account number, which you can use to sign in to your account and earn miles in the future. We recommend writing this number down somewhere you won’t lose it.

How to Earn Copa Airlines ConnectMiles Miles

As a member of the Copa Airlines ConnectMiles program, you’re eligible to earn reward miles in a variety of ways. However, some of the methods of earning miles through this program are far more effective than others. In the following sections, we’ll look at the most effective ways to quickly earn Copa miles.

The cheapest available award flight through the ConnectMiles program costs 5,000 miles, which is enough for a one-way economy-class Copa-operated flight within Panama. So, before you book an award flight through this program, you’ll need to have at least 5,000 miles in your account balance (and probably more).

Flying with Copa Airlines and Partner Airlines

For U.S.-based travelers, the best way to earn Copa miles is by crediting flights on Copa Airlines or one of its airline partners to the ConnectMiles program (since the ConnectMiles program doesn’t allow points transfers from any major U.S. credit card issuers or offer any co-branded credit cards to U.S. consumers).

To earn Copa miles on a flight, you’ll need to select ConnectMiles as your frequent flyer program of choice and enter your account number, either when booking or checking in for your flight.

When flying on Copa Airlines, the number of miles you’ll earn depends on the actual distance of your flight, your fare class and your status in the ConnectMiles program. The following table includes the percentage of your actual flight mileage you’ll earn in each fare class.

Fare classConnectMiles earned
Business Full 300%
Business Promo175%
Economy Full125%
Economy Classic/Classic Flex100%
Economy Basic50%

For instance, if you were to take a Copa Airlines-operated flight with a distance of 800 miles in Economy Full fare class, you’d earn 1,000 miles (800 miles flown x 125% = 1,000 Copa miles).

It’s also worth noting that you’ll earn bonus miles on Copa-operated flights if you have PreferMember elite status in the ConnectMiles program. Silver members earn 25% bonus miles, Gold members earn 50% bonus miles, Platinum members earn 75% bonus miles and Presidential members earn 100% bonus miles.

And, since Copa Airlines is a member of Star Alliance, you can also earn Copa miles by flying with any Star Alliance airline. Here’s the current list of Star Alliance airlines:

In addition to earning Copa miles with the Star Alliance airlines listed, you can earn Copa miles with several non-Star Alliance partner airlines, including the following:

Each of these partner airlines has its own unique earnings table that works pretty much the same way as the earnings table for Copa Airlines flights. To access these earnings tables, you can visit the Earn miles page of the Copa Airlines website, click on either the “In Star Alliance” or “On other airlines” tab, and click on the airline you plan on flying with.

Then, you can use these partner earnings tables the same way as the Copa Airlines earnings table by multiplying the actual distance of your partner flight by the percentage associated with your fare class. PreferMember elite status bonuses don’t apply to partner flights.

Booking Hotel Stays

Another good way to earn Copa miles is to book hotel stays through eligible partners, specifically through Booking.com. ConnectMiles members can also earn miles by booking stays through the ConnectMiles Hotels portal, Marriott Bonvoy, Rocketmiles, Barcelo Hotel Group and Melia Rewards. Each of these partners offers different earnings rates.

Booking.com in particular, offers a great earnings rate of 4X miles per $1 spent on reservations. Booking.com also offers a massive range of stay options, including luxury hotels, budget motels, hostels, unique stays like igloos and treehouses, and homestays. Plus, you can earn Copa miles while also working towards Booking.com Genius status, which offers discounts as high as 15% on stays a certain status tiers.

By contrast, if you decide to earn Copa miles on a stay with Marriott Bonvoy properties, you ‘ll forfeit the opportunity to earn Marriott Bonvoy points (or miles with one of Marriott’s many other airline partners) on that stay.

So, if you frequently use Booking.com to book stays, you may as well credit your stays to the Copa Airlines ConnectMile program. If you stay at hotels often, this could add up to a lot of miles.

Other Ways to Earn

There are several other ways to earn miles through the Copa Airlines ConnectMiles program, including renting cars, buying gas, shopping online, purchasing travel insurance and more. Unfortunately, none of these other earning methods are particularly effective.

Nonetheless, if you use Copa Airlines ConnectMiles as your primary frequent flyer program, you’ll probably want to pay attention to these other earning methods. They can help you earn some extra miles here and there and, ultimately, could earn you enough miles for an award flight.

Woman walking along a colonial-style street in Casco Viejo, Panama City

How to Book Award Flights Through Copa Airlines ConnectMiles

Once you’ve earned some miles through the Copa Airlines ConnectMiles program, you can redeem those miles in a variety of ways. However, if you want to get the best value for your miles, you should stick to redeeming them for award flights, either on Copa Airlines or one of its airline partners.

All award flights are priced according to fixed award charts through the ConnectMiles program, which means that you should be able to find award flight redemptions that offer several cents per mile in value. If you want to see exactly how much a specific award flight would cost, refer to the award charts on the Copa airlines website. Then, divide the cash price of that flight by the award price to get the value per mile that redemption offers.

When you’re ready to book an award flight, the first thing you’ll need to do is visit the Copa Airlines website and log in to your ConnectMiles account by clicking the “Log in” button in the top-right corner of the homepage.

From there, you’ll return to the homepage where you’ll find the flight booking tool box. To search for award flights, check the “Book with miles” box. From there, searching for award flights is essentially the same as searching for cash flights. Start by selecting the type of flight (round-trip, one-way or multi-city), passengers on your itinerary, your departure airport, your arrival airport and your travel dates.

When flying on Copa Airlines, travelers have the option to add a free stopover in Panama City to their itinerary with a minimum duration of 24 hours and a maximum duration of seven days. If you want to take advantage of this feature, click the “Stopover” button in the top-right corner of this tool box.

Once you verify that all of your flight information is correct, click the “Search Flights” button to conduct your search. On the next page, you’ll find all of the award flights that match your search query displayed, including flights operated by Copa Airlines and any airline partners.

Next to each flight listing you’ll find important information, including flight numbers, travel time, operating airlines and mileage required. You can sort these flight results by recommended, price, flight duration, departure or arrival time, operating airlines and number of stops.

Once you find a flight that suits your needs, you can add it to your itinerary by clicking on the cabin class that you want to fly in next to that flight’s listing. Then, a drop-down menu will appear displaying what’s included in each fare class within that cabin class, including refund and change policies. Click the “Select” button beneath the fare class that you want to book. Repeat this process for your return flight if you’re flying round-trip.

After you select your flights, you’ll be brought to a summary page where you’ll be able to see the total number of miles required as well as the total taxes and fees for your itinerary. If everything looks good, click the “Continue” button at the bottom of the page.

On the next page, you’ll be required to enter personal information about any passengers traveling on your itinerary, including name, date of birth, address, email address, phone number and travel document number (if applicable). You’ll also be able to select your seat and add certain travel extras to some itineraries.

Finally, you’ll need to enter a payment method to cover any applicable taxes and fees for your itinerary. Once you’ve done that, confirm your award flight booking. You’ll receive a confirmation number, which you’ll need to check in for your flight. You should also receive a confirmation email containing this number.

Before you confirm your award flight booking, you should double-check that you’ll be able to take that flight, as the Copa Airlines ConnectMiles program charges fees for changing or cancelling award flight bookings (which depend on the timing of your cancellation/change as well as your status in the ConnectMiles program).

For basic ConnectMiles members, changes made more than seven days in advance incur a fee of $75, changes made seven days or fewer from the departure date incur a fee of $100 and same-day changes incur a fee of $75. Cancellations made more than seven days in advance will incur a fee of $100 and cancellations made seven days or fewer from the departure date will incur a fee of $150.

Change and cancellation fees may be reduced or waived entirely for PreferMember elite status members.

The Bottom Line

The Copa Airlines ConnectMiles frequent flyer program is a great program through which to book award flights. That’s because this program still uses a series of fixed award charts to price flights operated both by Copa Airlines and its airline partners. Thus, with a bit of searching, you can find award flight redemptions that offer several cents per mile in value.

Unfortunately, the Copa Airlines ConnectMiles program is not an easy program with which to earn miles for U.S.-based travelers. ConnectMiles is not a transfer partner of any of the major U.S. credit card rewards programs (such as American Express Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards) nor are there any co-branded ConnectMiles credit cards available to U.S. consumers.

So, if you want to earn enough Copa miles to book an award flight through the ConnectMiles program, you’ll most likely need to do so by flying with Copa Airlines or one of its airline partners or by taking advantage of partnerships with hotels and rental car companies.

Nonetheless, if you find yourself with enough Copa miles to book an award flight, you can refer to the instructions in this article to ensure that the process goes smoothly.