US, Cuba reach accord to re-establish commercial flights

“We already have a Tampa-to-Santa Clara charter service and will look to have commercial flights there and to other Cuban cities as well”, he said.

Under an understanding declared Thursday – the one-year commemoration of the memorable movement in relations between the United States and Cuba – aircrafts can start working frequently booked business flights between the two countries. No date has been set for the final signing of the aviation pact but Engle said that nothing was expected to derail it. News last week, Obama said he would like to visit Cuba next year, the last of his presidency, but only if he can meet with political dissidents.

Hostilities between Washington and the new Castro administration escalated rapidly in the years after the revolution, following which then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced that the U.S. would no longer observe diplomatic links with Cuba. The U.S. removed Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List in May. While the majority of USA travelers are Cuban-Americans, there has been a sharp rise in Americans traveling for specially authorized purposes, particularly on educational tours known as people-to-people travel.

“We continue to have differences with the Cuban government, but we raise those issues directly, and we will always stand for human rights and the universal values that we support around the globe”, Obama said in a written statement.

“I can announce the United States has agreed to formally reestablish diplomatic relations with the republic of Cuba”, said President Obama.

Washington for its part is seeking damages for property that Cuba seized from U.S. companies and citizens in the early 1960s, and also wants to see democratic and free-market reforms on the island.

Since last year’s detente, the countries have restored diplomatic ties and reopened their embassies.

Flights to Cuba could begin within months.

“The day that the president of the United States decides to visit Cuba, he will be welcome”, Josefina Vidal, director of US affairs in the Cuban foreign ministry, told reporters.

That doesn’t mean just anyone will be able to hop on a flight to Havana.

“Not going to Cuba is sort of like a grocery store that doesn’t sell milk”, Scott Laurence, JetBlue’s senior vice president for airline planning, said in an interview.

The five-decade-old USA economic embargo on Cuba remains, with little prospect of Congress lifting it anytime soon, while critics of normalization say the policy has yielded no improvement in the Communist government’s respect for human and political rights.