Tampa International's flights to Cuba hit political, market turbulence

Tampa International's flights to Cuba hit political, market turbulence
Jamal ThaljiJamal Thalji, Times Staff Writer
Saturday, March 9, 2013 3:30am

Cuba lies just 300 miles away. It was 50 years, though, that really
separated it from Tampa. ¶ That ended in 2011 when Tampa International
Airport was allowed to resume commercial flights to Havana for the first
time since the trade embargo took effect in 1962. ¶ The city coveted the
route, which boosted the airport's international portfolio and gave hope
to those who want to restore ties and trade with Cuba. In the 18 months
since, more than 57,000 people have traveled from Tampa International to
Cuba. Miami no longer had a monopoly on the Cuban travel market, and
Tampa's 80,000 Cuban-Americans could visit family without first driving
four hours south to catch a plane. ¶ The Cuba flights are considered a
Tampa success story. Yet to many key players, there's been a lot of
turbulence behind the scenes.

Supporters grumble that the Tampa-Cuba route needs to attract more
non-Cubans. The route was also hindered by an airline price war,
bureaucratic red tape and — no surprise — Cuban-American politics.

Ralph Fernandez, Tampa's most vociferous pro-embargo, anti-Castro
activist, epitomizes those politics. If the market for Cuban flights has
stalled, hey, that's just fine with him.

"I should not be as bad as I am and be delighted in their failure," said
Fernandez, a Tampa lawyer. "But let's be honest: I am."

• • •

Traveling to Cuba isn't like traveling anywhere else.

Operators must get U.S. government clearance to fly there, and the Cuban
government's permission to land. For decades the United States permitted
Cuba flights from only three airports — Miami, New York and Los Angeles.
In 2011, the government allowed eight more airports to serve Cuba,
including Tampa International.

U.S. citizens need the U.S. government's permission to travel to Cuba.
Cuban-Americans can get a special travel license to visit family. But
tourism is not permitted. Non-Cubans need a reason — cultural,
humanitarian, religious — to travel there on what is called a
"people-to-people" license.

The past two decades have been a political rollercoaster for U.S. travel
policy to Cuba. Bill Hauf has spent a decade on that ride. The
68-year-old California real estate investor has been leading tours to
Cuba since 2000.

But for the past year, economics, not politics, was Hauf's biggest
problem. An airline price war erupted when the first flight took off for
Havana, he said, leading all three of Tampa's airplane chartering
companies to lose money.

Now just two companies are left. Hauf runs Island Travel & Tours, Ltd.
His rival is Tessie Aral, president of ABC Charters Inc. of Miami.

Hauf said ABC tried to run him out of business by slashing its ticket
prices and operating at a loss. That forced him to set round-trip prices
under $400 and plunge his company into the red. It went on for more than
a year.

"It's as if people were lining up at the gate and I were handing
everyone $150 for everyone to fly with me," Hauf said.

Aral, 55, ridiculed her competitor's complaints.

"This is not an elementary school," she said. "You don't say 'Oh no, she
hit me. She pulled my hair.' "

Aral agreed that competition has been fierce. ABC recently suspended its
flight to Holguin, a city on the eastern tip of Cuba.

Last month the number of flights from Tampa to Cuba dropped from five to
three. ABC flies to Havana once a week and Island Travel flies twice a week.

But Aral said she's not trying to drive anyone out of business. She also
lobbed her own charge at Hauf, that he tried to undercut her baggage
fees. Baggage is a profit center for the charter companies because
Cuban-Americans take so much stuff with them to relatives in Cuba.

Hauf said that was just for six months. His baggage fees now match
ABC's, he said.

He also said he's done with the price war. Last month, he said he raised
ticket prices to make a modest profit. Tickets cost $499 on Friday.

"We're no longer going to engage in this market pricing war," he said.

But Aral has her own problems with the Cuban flight market in Tampa:
It's dominated by the city's Cuban-Americans, and that market has peaked.

Something, she said, is missing: non-Cubans.

• • •

The market won't take off, Aral said, until more non-Cubans start using
Tampa International as their departure point.

"I wanted to encourage some of the Americans who travel to Cuba to
travel through Tampa," she said, "and for some reason I have not been
able to do that."

Those travelers need "people-to-people" licenses. But supporters of
Cuban travel say getting those licenses is complicated by politics and
bureaucratic red tape.

The U.S. embargo of Cuba is overseen by the Department of Treasury's
Office of Foreign Asset Control, or OFAC. It's an acronym supporters of
Cuban travel use with little affection.

OFAC decides who can charter the planes, book the flights and who gets
to go to Cuba. The agency also enforces numerous — and critics say
onerous — rules. OFAC restricts how much Americans can spend in Cuba and
makes them file detailed itineraries before they leave.

"They're very arbitrary," said Al Fox, 68, an anti-embargo activist who
is also president of his own think tank, the Alliance For Responsible
Cuba Policy Foundation. "Politics plays a big role in this."

The political pandering that has neutered Cuban travel is ridiculous,
Fox said. He pointed to a 2006 state law that prohibits Florida's public
universities from funding travel to "terrorist states" — including Cuba.
Private institutions like the University of Miami can go, he said, but
not the University of South Florida.

"How ridiculous," said Fox, who has led 88 tours and counting to Cuba.
"Since when did a state set foreign policy for us?"

Tampa City Council member Mary Mulhern, who advocates strengthening
Tampa-Cuba economic ties, said she felt targeted b y OFAC when the
agency asked her to account for her time and spending after a legally
sanctioned trip in 2011. Mulhern refused.

"I felt that I was being harassed, and that it was clearly meant to
intimidate me," she said. "Since I never heard anything back from them,
I suspect that this was motivated by local opponents of opening up a
relationship with Cuba."

OFAC said it does not comment on individual cases. In a statement to the
Tampa Bay Times the agency said "applications are considered on their
individual merits."

The pro-embargo crowd believes as Fernandez does: Rather than bridge the
U.S.-Cuba gap, cultural travel is a guise for tourism that helps fund
and prop up a regime they detest.

"The influx of money will buttress the position of the (Cuban)
government," he said. "They will intercept the lion's share of it. It
will go to keep the system in control longer."

• • •

Despite all the politics and regulations and roadblocks, not everyone is
unhappy with the Tampa-Cuba route. There are local Cuban-Americans who
don't have to go through Miami anymore. And there's Tampa International
Airport.

"The city worked very hard to be designated a gateway to Cuba," said
Chris Minner, airport vice president of marketing.

Tampa International has been intensely focused on boosting its overseas
portfolio. Cuba is one of two international destinations added in the
last two years. (Zurich, Switzerland, is the other.) And though the
passenger numbers for the Cuba flights are just a blip on the airport's
balance sheet, it is a prestigious catch. It comes up whenever airport
officials travel the world, marketing Tampa to international airlines.

Last month the airport's governing board, the Hillsborough County
Aviation Authority, was pleased with the latest passenger numbers. There
was a 64 percent jump in the number of passengers to Cuba from September
to December 2012 compared to the same period in 2011.

That's 5,000 more passengers over a four-month span.

"And we took all that from Miami?" board Chairman Steve Burton asked.

"Yes, sir," Minner told the board.

Minner said that in April the airport will meet with its Cuban travel
partners to take a fresh look at what can be done to improve the
business. The airport is also planning to promote awareness of the
flights and educate more travelers about how to legally visit Cuba.

But much of what affects Tampa's Cuban travel market — OFAC's rules,
"people-to-people" licenses, the Cuban government, the politics — is
beyond the airport's purview.

Still, Minner said, the airport is focused on what it can control, and
believes Cuba flights will continue to be a success for Tampa International.

"My role is to make sure that the airport is the best gateway that it
can be and that it offers the lowest costs to the carriers," Minner
said, "and Tampa's Cuban-American community, which is the third largest
in the nation, is a good bedrock for us to build upon."

Times researchers John Martin and Caryn Baird contributed to this
report. Jamal Thalji can be reached at thalji@tampabay.com or (813)
226-3404.

Tampa International's flights to Cuba hit political, market turbulence
03/09/13 [Last modified: Friday, March 8, 2013 6:49pm]

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