“We want a flight date,” dozens of Cubans shouted at the top of their lungs as they gathered this Thursday morning in front of the office of the Venezuelan airline Conviasa in Havana, which is in charge of selling flights between Havana and Managua.
As the days go by, the desperation of Cubans to find a ticket and be able to fly to Nicaragua grows. “Today we almost broke the windows of these there,” says one of the clients who stayed in the afternoon in front of the office located in the Miramar Business Center with resentment. The man in his 30s, along with other people, continued to sit outside the building.
“Here you have to come every day, gentleman, they are going to put flights and more flights,” says another woman sitting a few meters away, very hopeful that she will soon fly to Managua.
“We are not selling tickets. We have reported that sales are suspended for the moment, it is what we have reported all the time,” said an airline employee on Thursday, adding that at the moment they do not know when the tickets will be marketed again. . He assumes, he said, that “until the reprogramming is progressed,” although he also commented that the company authorities in Caracas, Venezuela, were meeting to “see what solution they could give to the problem.”
On December 6, in the same commercial office, Conviasa employees specified that from January 1 they would begin to sell tickets normally for the Havana-Managua-Havana route. Then they detailed that prices ranged from $ 500 to $ 1,000 or freely convertible currency (MLC).
The frequencies were scheduled for Wednesdays and Saturdays, with the first flight starting on December 15. In the first trips they were relocating “people who had already bought the ticket” before suspending flights due to the pandemic, said an employee. “In case of failures, tickets will be sold to those in the normal queue.”
Customers, even looking forward to January 1 and to better organize themselves, since then began signing up for waiting lists collected by Conviasa staff in mid-December.
Representatives of the airline reported that at the moment the website is not selling tickets from Havana and that they will only be able to find the connection Panama City-Managua-Panama City. This newspaper was able to verify that there are flights available between these two cities on Mondays and Saturdays in February for a value of 750 dollars and includes a carry-on of 10 kilograms and a hold luggage of 23.
“We come every day and this here remains hot“says another client who was staying in the afternoon this Thursday in front of Conviasa.” And because of what happened today they even put agents in civilian clothes to take care of this [la oficina]”, but that will not stop him from looking for information and being able to buy his ticket, he assures.
Since the Nicaraguan government established a free visa for Cubans on November 23, getting a ticket to Managua has been the main concern of many who see in the Central American country, the escape route in the midst of the severe political crisis and economic activity that crosses the Island and that has deepened in the last two years.
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