CheapAir.com Begins Selling U.S.-Cuba Flights

Just hours after CheapAir.com announced on Thursday that it had become the first online travel agency (OTA) to enable U.S. travelers to book flights between the U.S. and Cuba, the OTA experienced technical difficulties that prevented customers from finding such trips on its site.

CEO Jeff Klee said the company was working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible and suggested that it might have been caused by a surge in online traffic after the announcement was reported in consumer media.

As for the product itself, "We're not doing anything you can't do on your own, but we're making it easier by doing the legwork for you," Klee said.

Klee said that it took CheapAir almost a month to create the capability. He said the work was undertaken after the online service saw a surge in search volumes for travel to Cuba following the Obama administration's changes in rules regarding travel to the Caribbean island this year.

"It went from none to about 50 to 70 on a typical day," Klee said. "That got our attention."

In January, the Obama administration relaxed the U.S.'s longtime travel ban to Cuba, allowing Americans to travel there for one of 12 approved reasons, including professional, educational, religious and humanitarian purposes. An American booking a trip to Havana on CheapAir.com has to check a box indicating that the purpose of the trip falls under one of those categories.

CheapAir said that it is "booking flights to Havana, the Cuban capital, from all cities in the United States." But what it is actually doing is packaging two completely different flight itineraries into one purchase. Acknowledging that it is still not legal for an airline to sell direct or connecting flights between the U.S. and Cuba, the first flight has to be to a country outside the U.S., such as Mexico, from which a traveler can legally fly to Cuba.

In an FAQ section, CheapAir states, "It sounds complicated, but don't worry, we'll package the flights together for you so it will all be pretty seamless."
 
 However, in that same section, CheapAir warns customers that because it is buying two completely different flights, "Quite frankly, this does make the purchase a little riskier than a typical flight, since any change to one ticket will likely force you to incur penalties on the other, too."

"To be perfectly honest, it's not a great experience," Klee admitted. "You need to buy two tickets, so it's expensive. You have to overnight in Mexico City. We don't know what the response will be, but we figured we'd give it a try."

No other OTA offers the ability to book Cuba from the U.S. Kayak.com earlier this year added Cuba hotels and flights to its search engine, but with no booking links. The flight display includes scheduled flights on Cayman Airways or Copa Airlines that depart Miami or Tampa and transit to Havana many hours later through Grand Cayman or Panama City.

"It is complicated," Klee said. "Most [OTA's] are taking a wait-and-see approach and expecting at some point that travel to Cuba will become like anywhere else. We're going in that direction, but we wanted to offer an alternative in the interim."

Tom Popper, CEO of Insight Cuba, operator of small-group tours to Cuba, said that while CheapAir.com is offering a "viable alternative," to Insight Cuba's product, it's a complicated one that lacks the safeguards of typical air travel.

"Normally, the airline has responsibilities to get you to your destination. All of that is off in this situation," he said. "Whether or not the airline in Mexico City would help passengers, we don't know."

Popper still recommends that people book on one of the multiple, daily charters that fly out of Miami, calling it the "most convenient and safest way" to go to Cuba from the U.S.

"Until the airlines figure out the agreements to get the commercial airlines to fly either direct or through another destination, there are still a lot of questions," he said. "Traveling to Cuba is never easy."

Source: Travel Weekly