At 9:00 am and with 172 passengers on board, the first American Airlines flight outside the Cuban capital landed this Thursday at the Abel Santamaría Cuadrado International Airport, Santa Clara, after three years of suspension due to covid-19 restrictions. 19.
The US airline had already announced in October the restart of its operations outside of Havana, including the destinations of Varadero, Camagüey and Santiago de Cuba. On Facebook, the Villa Clara airport announced that the US airline will operate two daily frequencies between Santa Clara and Miami, with the capacity to move a little more than 170 passengers on each route.
The provincial press acknowledges that the largest flow of tourists to the island comes from Canada, but the connection with Miami favors “a considerable increase in operations” of the air terminal, which handles between 30 and 49 weekly flights.
American was left with only direct flights to Havana, after the Donald Trump Administration prohibited the commercial operations of US companies to small airports outside the Cuban capital, in October 2019. In June 2022, the Department of Transportation The US government lifted the restrictions, which opened the way for airlines to resume their connections.
In June 2022, the US Department of Transportation lifted the restrictions, opening the way for airlines to resume connections.
In similar preparations are United Airlines and Delta, but the companies have had to delay their restart dates due to logistical problemsmainly because they have expired contracts with service providers and the infrastructure at the Havana airport has not yet been adjusted.
More than 200 kilometers from Villa Clara, at the Juan Gualberto Gómez International Airport, in Matanzas, the Polish airline Lot also restarted operations, which will maintain a weekly frequency during the first part of the high tourist season.
A total of 252 passengers from the city of Katowice arrived in Varadero, the majority to stay in tourist complexes, Rolando Marichal Pineda, director of the Cubanacán company in Matanzas, told the Cuban News Agency (ACN).
While the Cuban government celebrates the increase in air traffic for the winter season, the data confirms that tourism has still not recovered the ground lost in 2020 due to the pandemic. At the end of last October, the authorities acknowledged their failure to revive the sector, one of the main generators of foreign exchange, and lowered their initial projections of international arrivals from 2.5 million visitors to 1.7 million for this 2022.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also taken its toll on Cuban tourism, since Russia was the country that brought the most travelers to the Island in 2021. This year the flow contracted by 65%.
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