American Airlines to launch charter flights to Cuba from LA

American Airlines announced Tuesday that it would begin to offer charter flights between Los Angeles and Havana in December, while the normalization of relations between the US and Cuba accelerates.

Americans still must meet certain requirements for travel to Cuba, such as visiting family.

As with JetBlue, restrictions will still apply to American Airlines’ Cuba service: tickets have to be sold through a separate, specially-authorized travel company rather than directly by the carrier; and regularly scheduled service is still prohibited.

While rules on travel to Cuba are being relaxed, there are still significant restrictions.

He said Washington owes Cuba indemnifications “that rise to numerous millions of dollars” for damage caused by the embargo. While travel to Cuba for tourism remains banned, a civil aviation agreement may allow individuals to travel to Cuba for cultural exchange purposes, instead of joining a tour group.

About 1 million Canadians visited the island in 2013, compared with 92,000 U.S. citizens. The U.S. last week reopened its embassy in Cuba for the first time in 54 years, and earlier this year was dropped from the government’s list of official state sponsors of terror. “And in my judgment, the sooner we can get to our normalization the better”.

He is taking the same posture with Cuba as he has with Obamacare and the Iran nuclear deal, the newspaper reports, hoping “the initiatives will become so embedded in American policy over Mr. Obama’s final 18 months in office that undoing them would be too difficult”.

The WSJ also said the US administration and the country’s airline industry were united behind efforts to resume scheduled airline service to Cuba.