DOT Begins To Award Flights To Cuba – American, JetBlue & Southwest All Winners

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Back in February the United States signed a historic agreement with Cuba to finally re-establish a true scheduled air services between the two countries. Although charter flights between the US And Cuba have existed for years the last scheduled flights between the US and Cuba took place over half a century ago.

Since the agreement with Cuba was announced, a number of U.S. airlines have been submitted applications to the Department of Transportation (DOT) for authority to operate routes between the U.S. and Cuba but, because of restrictions within in the agreement, not all the airlines can get what they ask for.

The US/Cuba agreement allows for 20 daily flights to Havana and 10 daily flights to nine other airports on the island. However, thanks to the incredible amount of demand for travel to Cuba, the major US airlines have submitted requests that would far exceed that quota so we’ve been waiting to find out what the results would be.

Today the results have started to emerge.

The DOT has now approved the applications of six U.S. airlines wishing to fly to Cuba this fall with services expected to start in the fall.

The airlines that have been awarded routes from the U.s to Cuba are American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Silver Airways, Southwest Airlines and Sun Country Airlines.

American Airlines

American Airlines has been awarded the right to operate scheduled service between Miami and five cities in Cuba – Camaguey, Cienfuegos, Holguin, Santa Clara and Varadero.

That appears to be all the routes, outside of routes to Havana, that American applied for.

American’s full request to the DOT:

• Miami – Havana (10x Daily non-stop flights)
• Charlotte – Havana (1x Daily non-stop flight)
• Dallas – Havana (1x Daily non-stop flight)
• Los Angeles – Havana (1x Weekly non-stop flight)
• Chicago – Havana (1x Weekly flight non-stop flight)
• Miami – Santa Clara (2x Daily non-stop flights)
• Miami – Holguin (2x Daily non-stop flights)
• Miami – Varadero (2x Daily non-stop flights)
• Miami – Camaguey (1x Daily non-stop flight)
• Miami – Cienfuegos (1x Daily non-stop flight)

The DOT will make a decision on flights to Havana later this summer.

JetBlue

With the decision on flights to Havana still pending JetBlue is another airline that got approval for all other routes that it requested:

• Fort Lauderdale – Camaguey (1x Daily non-stop flight)
• Fort Lauderdale – Holguin (1x Daily non-stop flight)
• Fort Lauderdale – Santa Clara (1x Daily non-stop flight)

Southwest

Southwest will follow JetBlue and also offer service to Cuba out of Florida’s Fort Lauderdale airport:

• Fort Lauderdale – Varadero (2x Daily non-stop flights)
• Fort Lauderdale – Santa Clara (1x Daily non-stop flight)

Other Flights & Airlines

Other U.S. cities that will gain direct access to cities in Cuba other than Havana are Chicago, Minneapolis (Sun Country) and Philadelphia. Some flights will be offered as frequently as twice daily and others just one a week.

Delta and United Airlines have only applied to serve the Cuban capital and so must wait a little longer, along with the other US airlines, to find out what routes, if any, they’re approves to operate.

One Small Issue

US tourists are still not free to travel to Cuba as a 50+ year embargo is still in place.

Under the new agreement visitors that fall into any of 12 categories will be permitted to use the new scheduled flights:

• Visiting family
• Workers on humanitarian projects or those providing support to the Cuban people
• Official business of the U.S. government
• Foreign governments and certain intergovernmental organizations
• Journalistic activities
• Professional research
• Educational activities by persons at academic institutions
• People-to-people travel
• Religious activities
• Public performance, clinics, workshops, athletic or other competitions and exhibitions
• Those authorized to provide travel services, carrier services and remittance-forwarding services
• Those participating in activities of private foundations, research or educational institutes
• Those involved in exportation of certain Internet-based services.

With such a broad spectrum of categories to choose from it really isn’t hard for just about anyone to justify a flight to Cuba so, as far as I can tell, the existing restrictions are pointless and nonsensical.

Bottom Line

The truth of the matter is that, regardless of the ban on tourists, commercial flights to Cuba are now officially here and people can visit the island a lot easiest than at any stage in the past 50 years – that’s pretty exciting.

The US DOT has done the easy part of its job so far as no airline has had to be disappointed at this stage – each got the routes they asked for. The tough part starts now as it has to decide who gets to fly the routes to/from Havana – that will be interesting to watch.

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