Starting on June 1, Spirit will turn into the airline to pull from the Cuba marketplace entirely, linking Frontier and Silver Airways. Two other airlines, JetBlue and American, have cut capacity either by decreasing frequency or downgrading .
It would be an understatement to state that traveling to Cuba hasn’t met the airlines’ expectations.
Last year, after the signing of a newly liberalized aviation agreement between the U.S. and Cuba, the Department of Transportation put the available Cuba routes up for competitive bidding by U.S. carriers. And accept that they did, completely hoping that Cuba would become the next “It” destination.
After the dust settled, U.S. carriers had signed up to run over 20 daily flights between the U.S. and Havana, and around precisely the exact same number of flights into secondary Cuban airports, amounting to more than 1.1 million one-way chairs each year. Since the recent pullbacks series, that capability has proven unsustainable.
How did the airlines do it so wrong?
Besides overestimating travelers’ enthusiasm the airlines neglected to factor in a number of the impediments to Cuba tourism. For now, the embargo on tourist visits to Cuba remains forcing visitors to misrepresent their reasons for coming into the nation. Credit cards are not widely accepted so visitors need to carry considerable amounts of cash. And they will need it Costs for travel-related services such as hotel stays and restaurant meals have dropped because U.S. scheduled flights resumed, in August 2016.
All of which creates a problem for travelers. On the 1 hand, ticket prices for Cuba flights are at or near their bottom. So getting there’s a bargain. But costs on the floor will more than offset any savings .
There is a time factor to consider. As the nation’s pace of modernization picks up, fueled by tourism, the “old Cuba” — what made it an attractive destination in the first place — is fast evaporating.
Reader Reality Check
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