After several days of uncertainty, hundreds of Cubans who hope to fly to Nicaragua via Conviasa received good news: as of December 15, the Venezuelan airline will resume the long-awaited connection between Havana and Managua with two weekly flights.
“From next week the flights with rescheduling will begin,” an employee reported this Monday at the airline’s office located in the Miramar Business Center in Havana, referring to customers who have purchased tickets and were unable to travel after the suspension of flights to the Island due to the covid-19 pandemic, in January 2021.
“We will be rescheduling flights to the people who have already bought. In case of failures, they will sell tickets to those in the normal queue,” added the employee, who also specified that the frequencies will be on Wednesdays and Saturdays, starting the first flight. next December 15th.
Cubans will not necessarily have to be vaccinated to arrive in Nicaragua, only with a negative PCR 72 hours before the flight will they be able to travel, indicated the representatives of Conviasa.
The airline also specified that from January 1 they will begin to commercialize normally tickets for the Havana-Managua-Havana route, which at the moment has prices ranging from 500 to 1,000 dollars or freely convertible currency (MLC), as the Cuban government in calling that currency.
Regarding the rescheduling, the company published a poster at its headquarters explaining that customers must enter a link and request a new ticket keeping the same route “without payment of penalty or fare difference, as read in a poster that appears on said page, although at the moment it does not allow any operation, since there is another poster that specifies that the site is” in maintenance”.
“We are going to be rescheduling flights to the people who already had bought. In case of failures, they will sell tickets to those in the normal queue”
Customers who will buy tickets from January 1 have begun to register on the lists collected by Conviasa staff at the Miramar Business Center after the announcement by the Government of Nicaragua, on November 22, to exempt Cubans from visas . At least ten listings have been delivered, according to customers in the queue.
Conviasa clarified that the aircraft it is using for this type of connection is of less capacity than the usual one, an Embraer 190, with 104 passengers, although it did not specify the number of seats available for the flights scheduled for the remainder of December.
A few hours after Nicaragua’s announcement to abolish the visa, hundreds of Cubans arrived at the offices of Copa Airlines and Conviasa in Havana in search of tickets. Indignation quickly gripped many of those who arrived at the doors of airline offices when managers announced that for the moment tickets would not be sold and they refused to give more details.
The MLC cards issued by Cuban banks are not used to acquire an online ticket flight, so travelers depend on the sale in the offices of the companies, that a friend buys it from outside the island or that they look for the informal market traders.
In 2019, Cuba was included in the migratory category B which allowed obtaining a consular tourist visa without waiting for the approval of the General Directorate of Migration in Managua. Since then, thousands of Cubans began to travel to the Central American country to acquire all kinds of products that are missing on the Island. Clothing, footwear, electrical appliances, and vehicle parts are some of the most purchased merchandise to be sold later on the black market.
However, after the announcement of the free visa, suspicions have grown that the Cuban regime is preparing a Mariel in slow motion through Nicaragua. Politicians like Marco Rubio and María Elvira Salaz, from South Florida, demand immediate action from Joe Biden before the “hostile act” of the Government of Daniel Ortega, which has acted with the assistance of Havana.
Conviasa will resume its flights between Cuba and Nicaragua on December 15. The Venezuelan airline will resume the long-awaited connection between Havana and Managua with two weekly flights https://t.co/JsTd4Xatvp pic.twitter.com/GMtX3aVK59
– 14ymedio (@ 14ymedio) December 6, 2021
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