The company is suspending its routes to the island beginning September 2.
14ymedio, Havana, July 23, 2025 — As travel to Cuba continues to fall precipitously, airlines with flights to the island are beginning take a financial hit due to empty seats and low demand. This week, United Airlines — the only U.S. carrier with connections to Havana from Houston, Texas — announced that it will suspend flights beginning September 2 and will not resume service until the summer of 2026 at the earliest.
According to an article in “Aviation Week,” United Airlines has notified the U.S. Transportation Department (DOT) that it plans to suspend its exclusive nonstop scheduled service to Cuba in September, citing seasonal fluctuations in the number of passengers and low demand resulting from both countries’ tighter travel restrictions. Service would not resume until sometime after the upcoming winter travel season. The airline also requested a formal waiver of dormancy conditions from DOT to preserve its rights to resume the route no later than the start of the summer 2026 season.
United is the only US carrier with connections to Cuba from a city other than Miami. DOT granted the airline the right to operate the route in 2016. Two years later, it allowed the company to increase the number of flights. United currently offers seven flights a week between Houston and Havana, with each carrying up to 166 passengers.
The company’s weekly charter flights between Jacksonville and the Guantanamo naval base will continue without interruption
The article notes, however, that the company’s weekly charter flights between Jacksonville and the Guantanamo naval base will continue uninterrupted.
United is not the first US company forced to suspend service to the island. In early June, American Airlines — the company with the largest number of connections between the two countries — also requested DOT’s permission to reduce the number of routes to the island this summer, including those to Santiago de Cuba. It cited low summer demand and tighter restrictions imposed by both Washington and Havana.
The company’s request was made two days after the Trump administration restricted most Cubans with US visas from entering the country. “Given these current challenges, and with the goal of more efficiently deploying scarce aircraft, American is seeking to supplement the temporary suspension of a limited number of its services between the United States and Cuba for the remainder of the 2025 summer season,” the company stated. The routes most affected by the cuts would be those to Havana and Santiago, with the latter route possibly being eliminated in the coming months.
In the case of Havana, American Airlines was hoping to modify the concession Washington granted it in March by cutting back to a maximum of three flights a day —down from eight— on Mondays, Thursdays through Sundays, and no more than four on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Canadian tourists make up the largest group of visitors to the island on an annual basis, followed in much smaller numbers by Cubans living abroad, primarily in the United States. As for visitors from other countries, interest in Cuba has waned in recent years. As of June of this year, the number of foreign visitors to Cuba was barely one million. So far, only 120,423 Cubans living abroad and 67,044 Americans have arrived in the country, a decrease of 77.6% and 20% respectively compared to the same period in 2024.
Routes from other countries are also being impacted by the tourism slump. The Colombian airline Avianca announced in July that it was dropping its Bogota-to-Havana route after August 31, just before the start of peak tourist season. Like other carriers curtailing service to Cuba, it cited lower demand as the reason for its decision.
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