With the announced cancellation of flights to Cuba by the airline JetBlue and reductions in flights by United Airlines and Delta Airlines, travel agencies believe that ticket prices to the island could soon increase.
The drop in interest in scheduled flights could be influenced by the fact that they allow less baggage than charter flights, an agency executive admitted in statements to Univision.
“We have competition with charter flights, which are very cheap. The airline allows you two packages of 25 kilos each, and the charter allows you any amount of baggage, including televisions and bicycles,” Yoandra Daz, director of an agency, admitted in statements to the above medium.
Dias advised Cubans residing in the United States to start making reservations for the end of the year now, as he believes it will be a high-demand time and that December will see fewer flights than in 2022.
If prices rise soon due to the drop in flights, are Cubans willing to pay, say, $800 for a ticket to Cuba?
“Too much; I wouldn’t pay it. As much as you want to see family, I’m not paying for it,” he admitted to Univision as a Cuban who has not traveled to the island to visit his family for two years.
“The Cuban’s idea isn’t to arrive with a suitcase, go to parties, and hang out on the street. “Our goal is to bring as much as possible for the local family,” he added.
Meanwhile, the announcement of the cancellation of JetBlue flights was a nuisance to some Cubans who had long been denied tickets to travel to Cuba.
This was hinted at in statements by Roberto Bulnes to America Tevé, a Cuban, who assures that he has been buying tickets to travel in September since mid-July and that he is now facing this complication.
Bulnes criticized the fact that the US company does not offer an alternative for cases like his, travelers who have bought tickets and made other compromises in renting in Cuba over a long period, in his case renting a car.
“The car costs about $700 to $100 a day. They are very difficult to get; there is no need to arrive and rent them. It is very difficult. There were hardly any; we were able to get hold of one due to a cancellation, and then they canceled my flight and I lost all the control I had,” he lamented.
According to the airline’s announcement, JetBlue will suspend flights to Cuba from September 17th through the last days United Airlines and Delta Airlines announced the reduction of their flights to Cuba and recognized a drop in demand, forcing them to reduce the number of flights and seats on their trips between the United States and Cuba.
According to the website, the three US carriers have applied to the Department of Transportation (DoT) for an exemption from inactivity on several routes due to a drop in demand for travel between the United States and Cuba. online aviation.
In the case of Delta Airlines, the company applied to the DoT for a seasonal exemption from October 29, 2023, to March 30, 2024, for its seven Atlanta-Havana frequencies and seven of its fourteen Miami-Havana frequencies.
Delta had previously applied for an idle waiver on its Atlanta-Havana route in the summer of 2023, which was accepted.
For its part, United Airlines notified the DoT of the suspension of its services between Newark and Havana As of October 29, 2023, due to economic circumstances.
Also at the end of August, Two Spanish airlines announced the cancellation and reduction of their flights to Cuba due to lower travel demand.
One of them is Iberojet, which, from October, for “operational reasons”, will close the route from Madrid to Santiago de Cuba, which was inaugurated less than a year ago. And the other is Iberia, which will reduce its flights to Havana to three frequencies per week as “already expected”.
In June, it turned out that the occupancy rate of Spanish airlines flying from this country to Cuba was low. Iberia, World2fly, Iberojet, and Air Europa flights barely manage to sell half their capacity, a fact that would confirm the bad omens for tourism in Cuba. A destination that is faring better than its Caribbean competitors loses attractiveness.
