Newark will soon have flights to Havana, Cuba - Asbury Park Press

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Hundreds of thousands of Cubans cheer and sing with the Rolling Stones in Havana in the group's first ever concert in communist Cuba, where rock music was once banned.

Tourists look at posters for sale in Havana, Cuba, in a 2014 file photo. There will soon be direct slights between Newark and Havana.

(Photo: ADALBERTO ROQUE, AFP/Getty Images)

Newark is one of 10 U.S. cities from which commercial passenger flights to Havana, Cuba, are expected to take off as early as this fall, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Thursday, the first flights between the United States and Cuba in more than 50 years, as tensions between the former Cold War adversaries continue to thaw.

Under the tentative plan, United Airlines, the dominant carrier at Newark Liberty International Airport, will fly daily from New Jersey's largest airport to the Cuban capital.

"These flights open the door to a new world of travel and opportunities for our customers," Oscar Munoz, United's chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The other airlines chosen to begin restoring service to Havana are Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest and Spirit.

The DOT plan calls for service between Havana and four Florida cities: Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa. Miami, which has more Cuban American residents than any other U.S. city, gets six round trips a day.

Outside of Florida, a stretch of communities from southern Bergen County through Hudson County and eastern Union County has the highest concentration of Cuban-Americans in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The other U.S. cities from which Havana flights will take off are: Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; Houston and Los Angeles.

The plan is expected to be finalized later this summer.

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Plans for the restoration of commercial air service between the two countries come as the two countries continue to move toward a more open relationship. President Barack Obama in 2014 announced that the U.S. would resume full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana. However, tourism is still prohibited. Americans visiting the country must get a license from the U.S. Treasury Department. Even so, the number of Americans visiting Cuba climbed 84 percent for the first half of this year, according to Cuban state news agency Prensa Latina.

Ofelia Gutierrez, of North Bergen, and owner of Costamar Travel Agency on 39th Street in Union City, said she expects that when commercial flights resume, her business providing reservations for Cubans going to the island to visit family will grow. She said now she has to work with charter companies for those types of reservations, which tend to be costlier.

Gutierrez, who is from Cuba, said she hasn't visited the island — where her aunts, uncles, and cousins live — since 2000, but said the commercial flights may allow her to return sooner rather than later.

"I would like to go," she said.

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Alexandra Estevez, of Little Ferry, has traveled to Cuba four times to visit her family. She said she hasn't been back since 2008 and said she is opposed to people flying to the Caribbean nation other than to visit family members.

"I just don't think they should be pumping more money into that government," said Estevez, who was born in the United States but whose parents were born in Cuba.

Estevez said with the large Cuban population in Hudson County, a flight out of Newark makes sense. "I'm sure the flights are going to be full," she said.

Victor Benet, of Lyndhurst, who left Cuba when he was 15, also said the convenience would be helpful to those who travel there. He said he went to Cuba to visit his grandmother for her 100th birthday, and said he traveled from New Jersey to Miami, where he caught a flight to the island. He said he paid "top dollar" for the Miami-to-Havana flight in 2012. "At least you won't have to go to Miami," he said.

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Mike Boyd, an aviation consult ant in Colorado, predicts the airlines will not be able to fill their Havana-bound planes with passengers. "This is not a preferred destination," he said. "It's a nice place if you want to see '55 Chevys."

Havana lacks modern hotel rooms and amenities most American travelers expect. If the Cuban government allows hotels, restaurants and other infrastructure to be rebuilt in the coming years, those flights are "potentially gold mines," Boyd said.

While some visitors do go to Havana because they want to see "an amusement park of decay," most are Cuban Americans visiting family members, said John S. Kavulich, president of the New York City-based U.S. -Cuba Trade and Economic Council Inc.

He agrees that seating capacity on Havana flights will at first be considerably greater than the demand for those seats.

Airlines may ground unprofitable flights and succumb to DOT's "use them or lose them" rules, said Kavulich. "It's likely there will be some attrition," he said.

With the high concentration of Cuban-Americans living in northern New Jersey, "Newark will likely run at higher (passenger) load factors than the JetBlue and Delta from JFK," he said.

A lack of hotel rooms in Havana and rising prices of those rooms are sure to dampen demand. After several increases, rooms in small two-star hotels in Havana that used to go for $80 a night will be fetching $280 a night in September, Kavulich said.

The decision to open travel with Cuba has been particularly controversial in New Jersey, because the former militant black activist Joanne Chesimard has been living in Cuba after her 1979 escape from prison, after she was convicted in the 1973 murder of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster.

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., a Cuban-American who has been critical of the Obama administration's attempts to restore relations, said Thursday in a statement that Cuba "was a state sponsor of terrorism" and he is concerned about the safety of Americans who fly to Cuba.

Two congressional delegations were recently denied visas to visit Cuba and investigate its aviation security, he said.

Other New Jersey elected officials were more optimistic about the restoration of service. The Newark-Havana route "will spur economic activity and job creation," and bring "new travel choices and business development opportunities," Newark Maryor Ras J. Baraka said in a statement issued by United.

A dozen U.S. airlines had applied for nearly 60 flights, but arrangements made by the two governments permit each country only to make up to 20 daily round trips between the United States and Havana.

The DOT said Thursday it wanted to pick carriers that "could maintain the best service," and the agency looked to bring flights to "areas of substantial Cuban-American populations" and to "important aviation hub cities."

Last month, the DOT announced approval of six U.S. airlines' applications to serve cities other than Havana. That arrangement lets each country operate up to 10 daily roundtrips between the U.S. and nine less well-known Cuban airports— a total of 90 daily roundtrips.

Currently, most Americans visiting Cuba take charter flights from Miami, al though Carnival Cruises has since May been sailing there from South Florida, said Arthur Berman, vice president of Latin American and Cuban travel for Central Holidays, a tour operator in Moonachie.

The commercial flights should make Cuban excursions more affordable, although the rising hotel prices will offset some of the savings. "If you live in New York, you get to go nonstop. You won't have to get a hotel room in Miami," Berman said.

Richard Newman: newman@northjersey.com

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