Fewer Flights to Cuba with 3 Airlines Dropping Out Soon
There are now three fewer flights to Cuba with the announcement of 3 airlines dropping out.
Spirit Airlines is dropping out of the US to Cuba flight competition. This follows Frontier Airline and Silver Airlines announcing their secession earlier.
Spirit Airlines is an ultra low cost operator to the Caribbean. It was hoped it would run low cost flights to Cuba. It seemed a natural addition for the South Florida airline.
“We really wanted [Fort Lauderdale-to-Havana] to work, especially being South Florida’s hometown airline … and the ultra-low cost leader to the Caribbean, but the costs of serving Havana continue to outweigh the demand for service,” said Bob Fornaro, Spirit’s president and CEO, in a statement. “Due to overcapacity and the additional costs associated with flying to Cuba, we don’t find it sustainable to continue this service while maintaining our commitment to pass along ultra-low fares to our customers.”
This is quoted from the Sun Sentinel.
Silver Airlines is ending all nine flights to Cuba as of 4/22/17. It blamed overcapacity, not incorrect estimates of passengers. Too may planes going there, and too large of planes flying.
You can only divide a pie so many ways before everyone is left hungry, I guess.
Frontier Airlines is dropping its lone route of Miami to Havana on June 4th
The glut is caused multiple airlines flying out of Ft Lauderdale and Miami. JetBlue and Soutwest are flying from other Florida cities too.
My personal note is that nobody knew how much demand there would be for US to Cuba travel, so multiple US airlines jumped at the chance to fly there. Without any accurate costs or traffic data, everyone was flying by the seat of their pants. A shake out had to occur. I just hate that the low cost carriers had to suffer first.
I have a list of approved US Havana Flights on a previous post. The non-Havana cities with US flights are here.
Maybe it will take lifting of the embargo, or some other positive actions to bring more US tourists in. (Actually “Tourist” travel remains illegal, that may be part of the problem… See my Travel Rules for Cuba for explanation on “allowed” travel.
Keep up with Flight News here, or click on blog above.