Canal Transit Coordination

Transit

The average transit time for a vessel, once the vessel is authorized to proceed, is about 10 hours from end to end. Panama Canal Pilots takes the ships from the beginning until the end of the transit in a safe, reliable, and expeditious manner. All vessels will be monitored by the Marine Traffic Control Unit of the Transit Operation Division in order to ensure that rules, regulations, restrictions and any other conditions that exist are applied during the transit. The Panama Canal is the only place in the world in where the Pilot takes the overall command of the ship during the transit.

Panama Canal have a transit reservation system application, which is an electronic information exchange between the ACP information system and the customer´s systems, that allows to collect, arrange, and validate information regarding your transit. Local shipping agents, owners and operators use this booking application to manage the booking transactions via online.

Booking Requests done through the booking application

• Daylight Transits
• Just in-Time transits
• Substitutions
• Swaps
• Change in Booking Dates
• Cancellations

Pre arrival information must be provided for every vessel arriving in Panama Canal Jurisdictional waters irrespective if the ship will not transit and only arriving for Bunkers, cargo operation or husbandry matters. Once available, you can send us estimated figures in order to comply with the 96hrs deadline, and final figures after departure from your last port.

Please refer to the OP NOTICE TO SHIPPING in case of any doubt, in order not to incur in any illegality or bad practices within the jurisdiction of the Panama Canal. Here is the link:

https://pancanal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/N01-2025-Vessel-Requirements.pdf