Route brief · SFO → PTY
San Francisco → Panama City
$846
round-trip · too little price history on this route to compare
Sep 24 – Sep 28 · 4 nights
American2 stops
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefPTYPanama CitySkyline on one side, colonial casco on the other, and Copa’s hub making Latin America cheap to reach.Best windowDec–AprAirportsTocumen (PTY)All routes into Panama CityWhen this route gets cheap.
Best time to be in Panama City: Dec–Apr. Fare history for this route is still thin, so we make no seasonal call yet.
The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes 2 stops and takes about 10 hours outbound, on a 4-night trip — ticketed under American, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $846 for 5,350 km each way, that works out to about $79 per 1,000 km flown. That is above the $39 typical of medium-haul fares here. Across the 3 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Panama City, this fare ranks 3rd — 58% above the $537 from São Paulo. For context, the middle fare among the 7 routes of similar length we watch out of San Francisco is $824. We have 1 month of cached prices for this route so far — not enough to call a fare cheap or expensive, so we publish the price without a percentage.
Route facts
- Airports
- SFO · Oakland (OAK) · San José (SJC) ↔ Tocumen (PTY)
- Flight time
- ~10 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~5,350 km each way
- Airlines on the board
- American
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Dec–Apr
SF → PTY, answered.
How far in advance should I book SF → Panama City?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for the levers we can measure.
Are there nonstop flights from San Francisco to Panama City?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under American. Nonstop options exist on many dates at higher prices — check the live search for your exact dates.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on August 24). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Panama City?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Sep 24 – Sep 28 · 4 nights.
Browse hotels ↗
Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next SF → PTY drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
Follow SF → PTY