Cuba-US Commercial flights to resume

USA and Cuban officials reached agreement Thursday on restoring regular commercial flights between the former Cold War foes after more than 50 years, a milestone on the one-year anniversary of a diplomatic thaw between the two countries.

In a statement, the State Department said the agreement was reached on Wednesday in Washington after talks headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Transportation Affairs, Thomas Engle, on the U.S. side, and Ambassador Yuri Gala Lopez for the Cubans.

The United States broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, two years after Fidel Castro ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in a revolution that steered the island on a leftist course and made it a close ally of the Soviet Union. “No one should expect that, in order to normalize relations with the United States, Cuba will renounce the principles and ideals for which several generations of Cubans have struggled throughout more than half a century”, Castro said.

“What we’ve seen instead of improvements is a huge spike in repression and in violence against the political opposition, repeated arrests of the same dissidents, and churches being shut down”, says Ana Quintana, a Latin America policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

But Obama added that more Americans are visiting Cuba, 145 kilometers off the southern US state of Florida, and engaging Cubans than at any time in the past five decades.

Despite the agreement, it still will be illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba for tourist activities.

As for the economic embargo on the island, although Obama has taken executive measures to make flexible the travel and some commercial transactions, the complete lifting depends on the U.S. Congress, now controlled entirely by Republicans, who overwhelmingly oppose the disposal. But even as the two countries draw closer, Washington continues to criticize the Communist, one-party political system.

Under the new arrangement airlines in the two countries can now strike deals in such areas as code-sharing and aircraft leasing, the embassy said. “We will review the terms of the agreement to understand how JetBlue can expand from charter service to regularly scheduled service”, said JetBlue’s senior vice president airline planning, Scott Laurence.

Other airlines – American Airlines Group Inc, Delta Air Lines Inc and United Continental Holdings Inc – have expressed interest in scheduling flights to Cuba.

American Airlines said it hopes to start flying scheduled services by the end of June and will continue operating existing charter flights until then.

Obama’s administration embarked on the rapprochement after concluding that decades of US isolation of Cuba had not succeeded in bringing about change.