US and Cuba sign deal allowing flights
For the first time in five decades, you’ll soon be able to take a commercial flight from South Florida to Cuba.
American, Jet-Blue, Spirit and Silver airlines all could consider flights from Miami or Fort Lauderdale after the United States and Cuba signed an agreement Tuesday to resume commercial air traffic.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Cuban Transportation Minister Adel Yzqui er do Rodriguez signed the deat Havana’ s Hotel Nacional.
The announcement opened a 15-day window for U.S. airlines to request rights
to the new Cuba routes. U.S. carriers then would have to strike deals withCubanaviation officials, a process the U.S. hopes will be complete by fall.
American Airlines spokesmanMatt Miller said his company plans to bid on routes from Miami and other unspecified “American hubs.”
The carrier has operated U.S.-Cuba charter flights since April 1991, the longest of anyU.S. airline, and offers 22 weekly flights out of Miami to Havana, Camaguey, Cienfuegos, Holguin and Santa Clara. American also flies from Tampa to Havana and Holguin, and between Los Angeles andHavana.
JetBlueAirwaysCorporation said itwas eager to offer service between “multiple” cities in the United States and the island, with spokesman Doug McGraw saying that “interest in Cuba has reached levels not seen for a generation.”
JetBluewould not specify the cities, but the airline has said previously that New York and Florida are natural gateways to Havana and other Cuban destinations.
JetBlue currently flies charters to Cuba out ofNew York, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. The airline is the busiest at Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport, with 22 percent of all passenger traffic in December.
Discount carrier Spirit Airlines, headquartered in Miramar, also plans to submit aproposal— though, like the others, it won’t specify routes, said spokesman Paul Berry. Spirit’s largest operation is out of Fort Lauderdale, accounting for 15 percent of its flights.
Silver Airways Corp., based in Fort Lauderdale, said it hopes to expand a long history of charter flights to Cuba. “Silver will apply to servemost, if not all, of the 10 approved destinations within Cuba, including Havana,” said President and CEOSamiTeittinen. Among other airlines: United Airlines is looking to serve Havana from some of its hubs, spokesman Luke Punzenberger said. The carrier’s major hubs include Chicago, Houston, Washington andNewark, N.J.. It currently does not fly charters to Cuba.
Southwest Airlines also expressed interest in flights to Cuba, and Delta Air Lines spokesman Anthony Black said that carrier plans to at least apply for flights fromits Atlanta hub toHavana.
U.S. airlines can bid on routes for as many as 110 U.S.-Cuba flights a day — more than five times the current number. All flights operating between the two countries today are charters.
The agreement allows 20 regular daily U.S. flights to Havana, in addition to the current10-15 charter flights a day. The rest would be to other Cuban cities.
“In making its selection, the Department will consider which proposals will offer and maintain the best service to the traveling and shipping public,” the Department of Transportation said in a statement.
Barring other major announcements, the restart of commercial flights will be the most significant development in U.S.-Cuba trade since Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced in late 2014 that they would begin normalizing ties after a half-century of ColdWar opposition.
The Obama administration is eager to make rapid progress on building trade and diplomatic ties with Cuba before the president leaves office. The coming weeks are seen as particularly crucial to building momentum ahead of a trip he hopes to make toHavana by the end ofMarch.
“Today is a historic day in the relationship between Cuba and the U.S.,” Foxx said. “It represents a critically important milestone in theU.S. effort to engage with Cuba.”
Yzquierdo Rodriguez said “the adoption of this memorandum is an important step that will soon permit the establishment of regular flights between the United States and Cuba.”
Nearly 160,000 U.S. leisure travelers flew to Cuba last year, along with hundreds of thousands of Cubanvisiting family, mostly on expensive, frequently chaotic charter flights out of Florida.
Commercial flights could bring hundreds of thousands more U.S. travelers a year and make the travel process far easier, with features such as online booking and 24-hour customer service that are largely absent in the charter industry.
U.S. visitors to Cuba will still have to qualify under one of the travel categories legally authorizedby theU.S. government. Tourism is still barred by law, but the number of legal reasons to go to Cuba — from organizing professional meetings to distributing information to Cubans — has grown so large andloosely enforcedthat the distinction fromtourism has blurred significantly.
Commercial travel will give travelers the ability to simply check an online box on a long list of authorized categories.
The deal does not contemplate flights by Cuba’s national airline to theUnited States, where lawyers for families and businesses who have sued Havana over decades-old property confiscations are eager to freeze any of its assets that they can get their hands on.
While Foxx was in Havana, Cuba’s Minister ofForeign Trade and Foreign Investment Rodrigo Malmierca was in Washington, D.C., speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s U.S.Cuba Business Council. He arrived Sunday and is leading the largest delegation of Cuban officials to the nation’s capital in decades. It includes officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cuba’s Central Bank, the trade ministry, the Chamber of Commerce and executives from Cuban companies.
Cuba’s Ambassador to the United States, José Ramón Cabañas, said the Cuban business delegation was one of the largest he could recall — “We don’t send a delegation like this very often. He also said Tuesday was probably the first time ever that a Cuban ministerwas in Washington at the same time a U.S. secretary was in Havana.
Malmierca was scheduled to speak later at the Chamber’s International Hall of Flags, and then on Wednesday to kick off the second round of regulatory talks between the United States and Cuba with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. Malmierca also plans an official visit withVirginiaGov. TerryMcAuliffe, who recently led a business mission from his state to Cuba.
During the two days of talks, theU.S. delegation will go over the latest set of U.S. regulatory changes announced in January and the challenges facing U.S. companies whowant to do business in Cuba. Among the highlights of the changes were allowing financing of exports of goods and services authorized for Cuba.
The Cuban delegation is expected to discuss its economic system and rules for financial transactions and importing goods and services.