“The start of regular commercial flights from the United States is a positive step and a major contribution to better relations between the two countries”, Eduardo Rodriguez, Cuba’s deputy minister of transportation, said at a press conference.
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Airlines such as Condor, Air Berlin and Eurowings, have increased tourism from Europe, while the latest news is in direct USA flights to the island.
The August 31 inaugural flight – the first of its kind since 1961 – is scheduled to take off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida and arrive in the central Cuban city Santa Clara.
Washington and Havana agreed in February to restore direct commercial flights, one of the watershed changes initiated in December 2014, when US President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro announced a thaw after more than 50 years of Cold War hostility.
That means JetBlue’s initial flights will mainly carry Cuban-Americans visiting relatives or other US citizens interested in seeing the Che Guevara Mausoleum and other cultural sites.
Services on Silver Airways and American Airlines Group Inc from the Miami area to other outlying provinces are the next to start, in September.
Seventeen U.S. charter flights land every day in Cuba, but they are expected to gradually succumb to competition from the airlines.
The flight is part of the agreement of up to 110 daily flights to Cuba approved by the US Department of Transportation, 20 of which to Havana and the other 90 to nine airports in different Cuban cities. In 2015 the Cuban government reported 161,233 Americans visited, compared to 91,254 in 2014, and arrivals through June almost doubled compared with the same period a year ago.
There is already a boom in visits to Cuba from the United States.
But another barrier to increased U.S.travel is that Cuba’s hotels, bed and breakfasts, transportation services and amenities are already stretched to the limit, with a record 3.5 million foreign arrivals previous year.
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The Cuban Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR) has Canada in its top market list, followed by the Cuban community overseas and the United State for 61.2-percent growth, despite the travels from that country are still restricted.
