Yes, there are domestic flights in Cuba again and you can take them too!

Covid brought all domestic flights to a halt and since then Cubana Aviation (Cuba’s flag carrier) planes have failed to take off and are rotting away in a corner of Jose Marti, Havana’s airport. Cuba has given up trying to keep its own fleet afloat after a few accidents that left Cubana with a very low score on international safety lists. I advised everyone not to take this risk. There were just too many planes falling from the sky.

Solution: Atlantic Airways.

Entirely in accordance with Cuban philosophy, an unprofitable and impractical solution has been found.

Every day a plane takes off from the Dominican Republic and flies empty to Santiago, Holguin or Camaguey. That’s where the passengers for Havana board. They fly to Havana. In Havana, the new passengers are loaded and the plane flies to one of the three cities and then flies back empty to the Dominican Republic.

These are charter flights from Atlantic Airways and they fly back every time for maintenance and Kerosene. The crew is Dominican (Although there is a Cubana representative on board for form’s sake.)

Domestic flight something for you?

These flights are heavily subsidized and yes, tourists can fly too. But, there is always a but in Cuba, you can’t buy tickets online so planning ahead is a tricky one. The tickets are sold by Cubana (not Atlantic Airways) and their website, in good Cuban fashion, is rattling on all sides. Tickets are ridiculously cheap! A flight Camaguey-Havana costs 690 Pesos! (that’s 3.50 Euro!). For a tourist, the same flight will cost 100 USD. You will not find many tourists on board because they do not know that these flights exist and, if they do, have not been able to figure out how to buy a ticket. Highly recommended as an experience, if only because the flights do not depart from the international terminals, but from the national ones! (These are museums that are still in perfect condition in the late 1950s.)

How do you buy a Ticket?

On Calle 23 in Vedado, near the Malecon, is the USD office of Cubana. That looks closed, but if you dive under the half-open roller shutter, the door turns out to be open. Walk in, buy a ticket, done. Never a queue! In all other cities you buy a ticket in the Cubana office, which is usually located in the middle of the shopping street.

Additional, funny detail: these flights cannot be found on FlightRadar. Why? That is not a useful question in Cuba!

Which is a useful question in this absurd country: How does money work? If you understand the money here a bit, life becomes much more fun and cheaper!