United States announces details of new scheduled flights to Cuba

An agreement between the US and Cuba could be imminent that would allow for regularly scheduled commercial flights between the two countries.

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.

But Obama added that more Americans are visiting Cuba, 145 kilometers off the southern USA state of Florida, and engaging Cubans than at any time in the past five decades. He hailed advances the two countries have made since December 17 a year ago when he and U.S. president Barack Obama announced they would seek to normalize ties and set aside decades of Cold War-era hostilities.

“As American business leaders, scientists, academics, and artists are increasingly engaging in purposeful travel to Cuba, they are forging important new relationships with the Cuban people and supporting the country’s rising entrepreneurial class”, said Sen.

Aircraft landing in the United States must meet USA safety standards, so aging Russian planes in the Cuban fleet will likely only fly domestically within Cuba.

Australian travellers wanting to visit Old Havana will find it a lot easier now that Washington has reinstated direct flights from the mainland to the Caribbean island.

Some members of Congress marked the first anniversary of Obama’s opening to Cuba by hailing the impact of the “small steps” that Cubans and American have taken toward each other.

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.

Almost every big airline presumably will want access to Havana, but the 20 daily flights will get chewed up quickly – especially if airlines hope to offer more than one round-trip a day from more than one of their hubs.

For now, general U.S. tourism to Cuba is banned by a USA trade embargo.

“Interest in Cuba has reached levels not seen for a generation”, its senior vice president for airline planning, Scott Laurence, said in the statement.

New York-based JetBlue Airways Corp, which already operates charter flights to the island, said in a statement it plans to apply to schedule service once it has fully reviewed the terms of the aviation deal.

Americans still can’t go as tourists, but they travel under 12 special categories, including humanitarian, religious and educational trips, and “people-to-people” trips that encourage communication between US and Cuban citizens. Among Obama’s regulatory changes this year was one permitting such travel to Cuba without specific Treasury Department permission.