Obama administration pushes for Cuba flights by year’s end

U.S. senators Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) and Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) both support renewed relations with Cuba and have introduced a bill to lift the travel ban. With the American flag flying over the U.S. embassy in Havana U.S. carriers are eager to initiate service and tap into what is believed to be a huge demand by U.S. travelers to visit the Island Nation.

“We stand ready to offer scheduled service as soon as the United States and Cuba allow commercial flights”, Art Torno, a senior vice president at American Airlines, said in a statement.

“There’s been a large increase in demand for traffic to get to Cuba”, Howard Kass, AA’s vice president of regulatory affairs, told WFAA TV of Dallas in July. Visas are also required, but can generally be obtained at the airport where the flight to Cuba originates.

American has flown sanctioned charter flights to Cuba since 1991. There is a regular schedule, flights are booked much like any routine flight, additional papers work for the Cuban government is the only difference from flying to say Jamaica.

American’s new charter service between Los Angeles and Havana will be sold by Cuba Travel Services and will operate on Saturdays beginning December 12 with Boeing 737 aircraft. They team up with Airlines like Jet Blue and charters operations like Miami Air. American, like other airlines, has publicly expressed an interest to add regularly scheduled passenger flights to Cuba if – or when – current restrictions fade away.

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 hard”.

In the meantime, American said it will begin the L.A.-Havana charter service on December 12.

The Obama administration is working to allow limited flights to and from Cuba by the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal reported.