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02/07/13 - Miami Herald - Flights to Cuba cut back for lack of demand

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO 
JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM

A weekly flight between Los Angeles and Havana made its last trip
Wednesday, the latest victim of a sharp reduction in U.S.-Cuba charter
flights that industry officials blame on vastly overblown predictions of a
boom in demand.

Cuba Travel Services of Long Beach, run by Michael Zuccato, announced that
it had cancelled its once-a-week, non-stop flight after the chartered
United jetliner returned Wednesday to LAX because of a lack of passengers.

Last month, Miami-based ABC Charters and XAEL Charters announced they would
cancel two Tampa-to-Cuba flights. ABC shut down its weekly flight to
Holguin as of Feb. 28, while XAEL will end its one flight to Havana per
week on Feb. 14.

About 45 charter flights per week from the United States to Cuba are now
programmed for the month of March, according to knowledgeable charter
industry officials, compared to nearly 60 in September. Those flights are
well booked, they added.

"There was the exaggerated image of a great explosion in American
passengers. But the point now is that there are not enough passengers to
maintain all those flights to Cuba," said Pedro González Munné, a Miami
businessman who monitors travel to the island.

U.S. companies involved in travel to Cuba began making feverish
preparations in 2011 to expand the number of charter flight. Commercial
flights to Cuba are not allowed because of the trade embargo, and charters
require special U.S. government permits.

For one, the Obama administration had just announced that it would allow
non-Cuban Americans to license educational trips to the island known as
"people-to-people" visits. Cuban Americans can go at will on family
reunification trips.

Cuba's state-owned Havanatour Celimar tourism agency, controlled by
military officers relatively new to the tourism industry, also leaned on
the charter companies to add new flights, said the industry officials.
They asked for anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

Havanatour may have really believed that lots more U.S. visitors would be
arriving, one of the officials noted. But there were also rumors that some
of the U.S. firms bribed Cuban officials to obtain permissions for the
extra flights.

U.S. companies suddenly announced plans to run flights from cities like
Houston, New Orleans and Baltimore, which have no large Cuban-American
populations. One travel analyst predicted up to 600,000 trips between the
two countries in 2012.

Also undermining the predictions of an increase in U.S.-Cuba travel was a
Havana decree last year hiking import duties on so-called "mules" - U.S.
residents who made an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 trips last year carrying
goods for resale or delivery.

What's more, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets
Controls, in charge of enforcing economic sanctions on Cuba, delayed and
denied some license applications last year because of allegations of abuses
in the program.

Cubans in California and Las Vegas sometimes prefer the cheaper flights to
Havana connecting through Tijuana, Mexico.


Original Source / Fuente Original:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/06/3220723/flights-to-cuba-were-cutback.html