14ymedio, Havana, January 16, 2019 — Starting next Monday, January 21, Martinique and Guadalupe will be reconnected with Cuba via airplane travel. The company Cubana de Aviación has just announced the resumption of flights between the three islands.
The rotations will be made once a week, every Monday with a Boeing 737-300 that has a capacity of 148 seats.
Departure from Martinique is scheduled for 12:40 p.m. from Fort-de-France with arrival in Havana at 6:05 p.m., while the return flight will leave Havana at 8:00 a.m. and arrive at Fort-de-France at noon.
In the case of Guadalupe, the departure will be at 3:25 pm from Pointe-à-Pitre with arrival in Havana at 6:05 pm. The return flight from Havana will take off at 8:00 am and will land at 2:25 pm in Guadalupe.
An official of Cubana de Aviación informed this newspaper that those interested should purchase the tickets at the office of the airline on the corner of 23rd street and the Malecón. As he explained, the current price for the round trip ticket for both Martinique and Guadeloupe is 585 CUC (Cuban convertible pesos, roughly $585 USD). He also confirmed that the plane that Cubana will use to cover these destinations is one of two Boeing-737s that “were rented from another company,” whose name he said he did not know.
The airline Cubana de Aviación halted its flights in May 2018, due to an aircraft availability problem. Now, thanks to the fact that the company has contracted for two Boeing aircrafts, it can resume flights to the Antilles.
The national airline crisis worsened after the May 18 accident involving a Boeing 737-200, leased from the Mexican company Global Air, which crashed shortly after taking off on a flight between Havana and the city of Holguín. 112 of the 113 people on board died.
In the middle of last year, Cubana de Aviación suspended most of its domestic and international flights for several months. At that time, the state airline said that the decision to cancel those flights was the result of “problems that have been accumulating,” among which it indicated was lack of spare parts and “not being able to make repairs to some aircraft.”
Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria
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