CAL continues Cuba flights despite fuel crisis

BRENT PIN­HEIRO

brent.pin­[email protected]

As Cu­ba grap­ples with an on­go­ing fu­el cri­sis, state-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) says it will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate its week­ly flight to Ha­vana, that coun­try’s cap­i­tal.

A No­tice to Air Mis­sions (NO­TAM) is­sued by the Jose Mar­ti In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Sun­day, warns air­lines that Jet A-1 fu­el is not avail­able at the air­port. Sim­i­lar warn­ings are in place for sev­en oth­er ma­jor Cuban air­ports, in­clud­ing those at Va­radero and San­ti­a­go de Cu­ba.

The NO­TAMs are in place un­til March 11th.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, the air­line con­firmed it is aware of the is­sues with jet fu­el at the Ha­vana sta­tion and said it has im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures to car­ry ex­tra fu­el out of Port of Spain to sup­port op­er­a­tions. CAL says it will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and is ready to im­ple­ment any "nec­es­sary con­tin­gency mea­sures to en­sure safe and re­li­able ser­vice".

On Mon­day, Mon­tre­al-based car­ri­er Air Cana­da an­nounced it was sus­pend­ing its ser­vices to Cu­ba in­def­i­nite­ly due to the cri­sis. The air­line nor­mal­ly op­er­ates 16 week­ly flights to Cu­ba. It now plans to fly emp­ty planes to the is­land to pick up some 3,000 pas­sen­gers al­ready there and re­turn them to Cana­da.

West­Jet al­so an­nounced plans to wind up win­ter op­er­a­tions in Cu­ba. In a late-night an­nounce­ment, the West­Jet group said it will be­gin util­is­ing fer­ry flights to bring home its guests cur­rent­ly in Cu­ba. The de­ci­sion im­pacts Sun­wing Va­ca­tions, West­Jet Va­ca­tions and Va­cances West­Jet Que­bec as well.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Air Transat is tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ing all flights to Cu­ba un­til April 30, 2026. Air Transat will al­so be repa­tri­at­ing pas­sen­gers.

Cana­da is Cu­ba's biggest tourist source mar­ket and a ma­jor source of much-need­ed for­eign ex­change.

Oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines have not can­celled ser­vices but will now ei­ther make tech­ni­cal stops in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries for fu­el be­fore con­tin­u­ing their jour­neys or load ex­tra fu­el for both legs of their jour­neys.

Cu­ba has seen its fu­el sup­plies dwin­dle since the Jan­u­ary 3rd at­tack on Venezuela, which led to the oust­ing of Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro. Venezuela has been a ma­jor sup­pli­er of oil to Cu­ba.

In a Jan­u­ary 29th Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der, U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ened to im­pose tar­iffs on any coun­try that di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly sells or oth­er­wise pro­vides any oil to Cu­ba, call­ing the Cubans gov­ern­ment's "poli­cies, prac­tices, and ac­tions" an "un­usu­al and ex­tra­or­di­nary threat".