Postal flights between United States and Cuba receive stamp of approval

Other official sources, cited on condition of anonymity by CNN and The Washington Post, said the accord concerns technical elements and it will take several months before U.S. airlines can begin to sell tickets for flights to Cuba.

He said no date has been set for final signing of the aviation agreement, but no issues were expected to stop it.

USA enthusiasm for the since quite a while ago segregated island crested for the current year after President Obama reported that the US would start normalizing relations with the Comrade government there.

“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.

Under the new policy, Americans still can not travel as tourists, they must do so to visit family, for religious activities or go for one of another 10 sanctioned reasons.

That will make travel for Australians to Cuba a lot easier.

Nationally, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines all applauded the U.S.-Cuba agreement and said they will work with the U.S. Department of Transportation to secure rights to fly to Cuba. For decades, Washington’s policy was to isolate the island. By July they had agreed to restore diplomatic ties after a 54-year break. The Obama administration has also undertaken a number of projects to help facilitate enhanced business dealings with the communist state.

The governments had been speaking about restoring a postal link since President Barack Obama entered office, but those talks stalled when Cuba imprisoned USA contractor Alan Gross.

The memorandum of understanding ratifies both countries’ commitment to protect civil aviation from acts of unlawful interference and reiterates the commitment to act according to the global conventions related to aviation security, said a Cuban embassy statement.

“We are really pleased about the opportunity to engage in scheduled service sometime in 2016 between the United States and Cuba”, said Howard Kass, the airline’s vice president of regulatory affairs.

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.

While Thursday’s announcement certainly points to a coming era of positive ties between Cuba and the US, it does not change the fact that many of Washington’s restrictions against Cuba continue to apply in full force. Since then, Cuba has seen a boom in USA citizens visiting the island with a recorded 138,120 Americans arriving over the first 11 months.