Scheduled air service between the U.S. and Cuba resumed earlier today after a hiatus of 55 years, with a JetBlue Airways flight from Fort Lauderdale to Santa Clara.
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JetBlue Flight 386 is set to take off from Fort Lauderdale in southeastern Florida at 9:45 am (1345 GMT) with 150 passengers on board.
“We applaud Secretary Anthony Foxx and the team at DOT for their thoughtful and impartial approach toward opening USA commercial service to Cuba”, said John Kirby, Alaska’s vice president of capacity planning.
As we have reported, the USA embargo remains in place, and USA citizens are not allowed to travel to Cuba as tourists. Travelers must fall under one of a dozen authorized categories, among them for family visits, humanitarian missions, journalistic activity, educational activities, professional research, religious activities, public performances, clinics, athletic or other competitions and import or export business.
U.S. travel to Cuba is on track to triple this year to more than 300,000 visitors in the wake of the 2014 declaration of detente.
Cuba and the United States began normalising relations in December 2014 after 18 months of secret talks and have since restored full diplomatic ties.
Improved air travel resulted from U.S. President Barack Obama’s opening toward Cuba.
A JetBlue Airways Corp passenger jet arrived from Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara.
The US cities operating the links are Atlanta (BSE: 532759.BO – news), Charlotte, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York, Orlando, and Tampa. The tentative list of airlines included Alaska Air, American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, and United, according to the Department of Transportation.
“The 1st USA commercial flight to #Cuba since 1961, just over a year after raising the flag at United States embassy Havana”.
The countries had been hostile for more than five decades, since Fidel Castro ousted US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in a 1959 revolution that steered the island on a communist course and made it a close ally of the Soviet Union. “That’s all changing now that direct flight service is being restored between the USA and Cuba after more than 50 years”.
Following an historic arrangement between the US and Cuba to re-establish scheduled air service, a dozen USA airlines applied for the chance to operate scheduled passenger service to Havana.
A burly, bearded Cuban-American flight attendant nearly choked up as he told us, “We are really excited that this happened for Cubans and for people from the United States as well”.
Of the 3.5mn tourists in Cuba in 2015, only 161,000 were Americans.
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Commercial flights are expected to greatly increase the number of American visitors.
