Regular flights to resume between US and Cuba: State Dept

The United States and Cuba reached an arrangement that will establish scheduled air services between the two countries.

Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of the announcement by Presidents Obama and Raul Castro that they were ending a half-century of U.S.-Cuban enmity.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parilla traveled to Washington in July to re-open Cuba’s USA embassy, and Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Cuba a month later to re-open the US embassy there for the first time since 1961.

Thirty more flights a day would more than double current US air traffic to Cuba but it may take years to reach that number.

At the moment, Americans are allowed to visit Cuba without having to apply for permission from the government if they are visiting close relatives, are participating in academic, research, or religious programs, or are journalists or athletes taking part in competition.

“We are advancing our shared interests and working together on complex issues that for too long defined_and divided_us”, Obama said in a statement issued Thursday.

The news will pave the way for United States airlines to sell tickets to Cuba on their websites directly to travelers.

Travel companies have already started moving into the island nation, as MSC became the first major cruise line to start operations in Cuba this week.

That’s making many Cubans relatively well-off but those still earning meager state salaries and waging daily struggles to find scarce and expensive products express a rising sense of impatience and dissatisfaction.

Tourists in Old Havana, on December 16, 2015.

However, media reports said the aviation deal allows 30 regularly scheduled flights a day.

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U.S. travelers who want to visit Cuba would have to qualify under one of the U.S. Treasury Department’s 12 categories for legal travel to the island. And U.S. businesses eager to launch projects in Cuba say federal regulators are meeting many requests for licenses with confusion or silence. “It’s been six months that it’s been in the process”.