U.S.-Cuba commercial flights on the horizon

U.S.-Cuba commercial flights on the horizon

Airlines awaiting word from DOT when they can submit route requests
20 flights daily to Havana up for grabs as well as routes to other Cuban
cities
Cuba also wants right to fly to U.S
BY MIMI WHITEFIELD
mwhitefield@miamiherald.com

American Airlines' Howard Kass is hopeful that the airline will be
flying regularly scheduled service between the United States and Cuba
within the first half of this year and says Miami will play a big role
in resumption of commercial flights to the island.

U.S. and Cuban officials reached a preliminary agreement Dec. 16 to
resume scheduled flights between the two countries for the first time in
more than five decades as well as to continue the charter flights that
have long served as the only bridge between the United States and Cuba.


A copy of this vintage Delta poster advertising flights to Cuba is in
the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta. Delta
Now the documents are being translated and the translations verified — a
process that's expected to take a few more weeks. When the agreement is
released, the U.S. Department of Transportation will issue a notice
instructing U.S. air carriers how to submit applications for Cuban routes.

The government is expected to approve up to 20 flights a day to Havana
and 10 daily for nine other Cuban cities with international airports.

For competitive reasons, the airlines aren't being too forthcoming about
the routes they want to serve. But Kass, American's vice president of
regulatory affairs, said, "I would suspect that Havana would be
oversubscribed."

If that's the case, there may be a few rounds of back and forth with DOT
as airlines make their case why they should be granted specific routes
and flight frequencies. DOT will ultimately make the decision, and it's
possible that if there's not much competition among U.S. carriers for
secondary Cuban markets, approval for those destinations might come
sooner than for Havana.

Josefina Vidal, who heads the Cuban Foreign Relations Ministry's U.S.
division, told the Cuban News Agency (ACN) last week that once a final
agreement is signed, then U.S. airlines must sign contracts with Cubana
de Aviación, Cuba's national carrier, and the Civil Aeronautics
Institute. "It's a complex task, very technical, and the United States
must complete various steps, bidding [on routes], because there are many
airlines and all have equal rights in terms of market share," she said.

ADVERTISING
"We still believe we'll be flying scheduled service to Cuba within the
first half of 2016," said Kass. "We're optimistic that DOT will move
swiftly to permit U.S. carriers to offer scheduled service."

American isn't the only airline interested in Cuba service. JetBlue,
United Airlines, Southwest and Delta have all indicated they want to
throw their hats into the ring.

"The interest is still standing. We're just waiting for the government,"
said Sarah Lora, Delta's spokeswoman for Latin America and the Caribbean.

She declined to say which routes Delta is interested in but said she
expects the airline's Atlanta hub to be in its plans.

For American, the name of the game is Miami. "Miami is very important to
us — a big part of our plans," said Kass. "But we'll also be applying
for other U.S. gateways."

Among other U.S. gateways that might be interesting to carriers are big
cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Cuban charter flights
also currently serve Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, so they also may figure
in commercial airlines' plans.

With commercial service, passengers from other cities in the U.S. as
well as abroad should be able to make "seamless connections" to their
Cuba-bound flights, Kass said.

Miami International Airport is already the main embarkation and arrival
point for Cuba charters. In 2015, 444,667 passengers departed from MIA
on 4,283 charter flights bound for Cuba. Passengers going to and coming
from Cuba through MIA topped 907,000 last year, compared to 696,359 in
2014, according to the airport.

Taking a charter flight to Cuba often involves check-in four hours
before departure, waiting in line behind luggage carts piled high with
televisions and shrink-wrapped parcels and a cumbersome check-in process
that involves queuing up numerous times.

Kass said check-in on regularly scheduled flights should improve. "If it
works as we anticipated, the process of flying to and from Cuba will be
similar to flying to any of our other Latin American destinations. There
should be fewer formalities," he said.

With the embargo still in effect, passengers will still have to show
they fall into one of 12 categories of travel authorized by the U.S.
government, have a special license from Treasury's Office of Foreign
Assets Control, or must be Cuban-Americans.

As American works on the route proposals it intends to submit to DOT, it
has been leasing its planes to charter companies ABC Charters, Cuba
Travel Services, Marazul and Xael. In 2015, it operated 1,200 charter
flights to Cuba — more than any other U.S. airline.

"We're already the largest U.S. carrier to Cuba and we intend to remain
the largest U.S. carrier in the future," said Kass.

JetBlue also has been working with charter partners to offer service to
Havana from New York's JFK airport, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa and from
Tampa to Santa Clara, Cuba. As commercial service resumes, JetBlue
officials say the airline is positioned to be "the carrier of choice for
travel to Cuba."

"Interest in Cuba has reached levels not seen for a generation," said
Scott Laurence, JetBlue's senior vice president airline planning. When
the agreement with Cuba is published, he said, JetBlue will review it
"to understand how JetBlue can expand from charter service to regularly
scheduled service.

"We hope the next dot on our Caribbean route map will be Havana, and
possibly even other destinations in Cuba," Laurence said.

The understanding between Cuba and the U.S. to resume commercial air
service came after three days of negotiations in Washington in December.

A U.S. official involved in the talks said that Cuba made it clear it
wants reciprocity — meaning it also would like its airlines to offer
scheduled service to the United States. Those familiar with the
preliminary document say it does include that principle.

How that works may become clear after the commercial air agreement is
released. But Cuba's desire for reciprocity could be complicated by
civil judgments in U.S. courts against the Cuban government that have
been filed by those who claim they or family members have suffered
abuses at the hands of the Cuban government.

The plaintiffs have won their cases by default because Cuba has chosen
not to defend itself. So far, judgments stand at several billion
dollars, and if Cuban planes fly to the United States, they are in
danger of being seized to satisfy the judgments.

Among the options for the Cuban government and Cubana de Aviación —
commonly known as Cubana — would be a code-sharing arrangement with
other airlines, leasing aircraft from a third party — an alternative
that still might get tied up in litigation, or simply waiting for a less
risky environment.

When the agreement goes into force, the airlines of the two countries
may enter into cooperative marketing arrangements that include
code-sharing and aircraft leases "between them or with third-country
airlines," Cuba's Foreign Ministry said in a December statement.

Some of the U.S. airlines vying to serve Cuba have had a long history
there, others that flew to Cuba before the revolution no longer exist
and some, like JetBlue, were founded well after the 1959 Revolution.

Delta, for example, inherited passenger service to Havana when it merged
with Chicago and Southern Air Lines in 1953, and it offered nonstop
flights from New Orleans to Havana. Both political instability and
profitability issues prompted it to suspend service to Cuba on Dec. 1, 1961.

Since the revolution, Delta has leased its planes for hundreds of
charter flights to the island, and last May when the Minnesota Orchestra
returned to Cuba for its first performance in 86 years, the musicians
and their instruments flew on a charter flight using a Delta plane. It
was the first Minneapolis-Havana flight ever.

Cubana also is linked to another storied name in American aviation, Pan
American World Airways, which acquired it in 1932 and operated it as a
subsidiary. Cubana began offering scheduled passenger service to Miami
in 1945, and was expropriated by the Cuban government in May 1959 and
became Cuba's national airline.

Source: U.S.-Cuba commercial flights on the horizon | Miami Herald -
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/in-depth/article55173320.html