Delta to Resume Charter Flights from Atlanta to Havana

Getting from Atlanta to Cuba could soon become a whole lot easier. In a sign of growing confidence that long-rigid relations between the United States and Cuba are easing, Delta Air Lines is expected to announce plans to resume charter flights from Atlanta to Havana as early as spring 2016, according to a company executive.

Tony Torres, Delta’s General Manager of Sales for the Caribbean and Central America, says the announcement could come as soon as this fall.

“Delta is very interested in serving the Cuban market,” he said. “…It’s such a unique market that people have not had access to in the past.”

Torres traveled to Cuba in recent days with a contingent from the World Affairs Council of Atlanta that includes Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Councilman Kwanza Hall. Part of Delta’s strategy in being here now is to create awareness of what he called an “untapped market”

Delta Air Lines briefly operated charter flights to Havana in 2011 and 2012, but halted the service after about a year due to low profits.

But now, with a push from the White House to re-establish diplomatic relations, Delta is planning for a boon in Americans seeking to explore the long off-limits country. A local historian told the World Affairs Council this weekend that U.S. tourism experts predict the number of American tourists to Cuba will rise from three million to five million in the next two years.

While it would take an act of Congress to lift the decades-old trade embargo, Americans are allowed to visit the island under certain circumstances established by the U.S. Treasury Department. Trips for educational purposes, for example, are permitted. Many of those travel restrictions have loosened, however, under President Barack Obama.

Standing in downtown Havana, as classic 1950s American cars rolled by and Latin music played from a nearby bar, Torres explained that Delta expects tourists to seek out Cuba’s leading city, as well as its iconic beaches.

Delta, he said, wants “to be in a position to capitalize on that when these markets start to open.”

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution