This week airlines Frontier Airlines and Silver Airways announced they were reducing the number of flights offered to Cuba, following in the footsteps of JetBlue and American Airlines.
“Other airlines continue to serve this market with too many flights and oversized aircraft, which has led to an increase in capacity of approximately 300 per cent between the US and Cuba,” a spokesperson for Silver told the New York Times.
“It is not in the best interest of Silver and its team members to behave in the same irrational manner as other airlines.”
Many airlines originally rushed to offer a large number of scheduled flights to Cuba when improved relations between Washington and Havana meant commercial flights could travel between the two countries for the first time in 50 years.
The flights recommenced from August 2016.
Experts anticipated demand would be huge – but has tourism in Cuba not taken off as predicted, hence the culled flight schedules?
Since 2014, when the old travel restrictions between Cuba and the US became more flexible, American visitors have flocked to the island in increasingly large numbers.
In 2016, a record four million tourists visited Cuba – a 13 per cent increase on the previous year.
In 2017, the Cuban Ministry of Tourism predicts an increase of a further 100,000 visitors.
Of those who visited the island last year, 614,433 were American according to Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s chief negotiator in talks with the United States. This is an increase of 34 per cent from the previous year.
Hotels in Cuba have been overflowing during the winter season, and as the demand for rooms increases, so hotel prices have soared to as high as $ 500 a night.
Increased visitor numbers also mean there are periodic shortages of beer and bottled water.
The Miami Herald reported that a Havana club, the Yellow Submarine, completely ran out of beer and ice one night in January.
The publication also claimed that the wait in the line to exchange money at Havana airport can stretch for hours.
Business definitely seems to be booming, so why the airlines’ cull?
Perhaps they’re taking inspiration from Donald Trump, who has said in the past that unless the US gets a more favourable arrangement in its dealings with Cuba, he might scrap the new travel freedoms.
