Direct flights between Russia and Cuba return on October 1. The operator Pegas Touristik announced this Wednesday that there will be routes to Varadero and Cayo Coco, which had been left without Russian tourists since, after the invasion of Ukraine, sanctions came into force against companies from the Eurasian country that complicated the journey.
The Russian Tour Operators Agency released a statement with the new tour packages, which have Nordwind Airlines for travel.
Varadero will be the first destination available and there will be four weekly flights between Moscow and the Cuban resort, which are a distance of 13 hours away. On October 2, the second destination, Cayo Coco, will start, which will have three frequencies a week.
Juan Carlos Escalona, advisor to the Cuban embassy in Moscow on tourism, told the local press that Havana guarantees Russian companies “the inviolability of their aircraft.”
“We really hope that other tour operators and airlines will follow the example of Pegas Touristik and Nordwind Airlines. Cuba is ready for the return of Russian tourists,” he said.
In addition, the official made reference to the MIR cards, a Russian payment system that Cuba and Venezuela are trying to put into operation in their countries since Visa and MasterCard suspended their operations in Russia and prevented their citizens from paying with their cards abroad.
“Cuban and Russian experts are in active contact on this issue,” said Escalona, who insisted that these cards, currently accepted in Turkey, Vietnam and six former Soviet republics, can be used before the end of the year.
The Cuban authorities have focused on recovering the Russian tourist market, the only one that showed constant growth data in recent years, although it was still behind the Canadian, the leader in visitors.
The poor management of the reopening of borders after the pandemic had already caused many Russian visitors to choose the Dominican Republic as a preferred Caribbean destination, but the last straw was the war.
The closure of airspace to Russian ships by Europe complicated the maintenance of the routeswhich had to trace a much wider trajectory through the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea until reaching the North Atlantic.
This meant three more hours of travel and a lot of fuel, so initially all direct flights to the Island were suspended, which will return coinciding with the high season and could, if there is demand, improve the battered tourism data.
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