Cuba travel

Blame Trump: Alaska Airlines to drop its LA – Havana flights

Blame it on Donald Trump’s Cuba policy:

Today Alaska Airlines announced that  – effective January 22, 2018 – it will be canceling its daily flight between Los Angeles and Havana, Cuba.

The Seattle-based airline began offering the flight on January 5 of this year.

According to the airline, about 80 percent of the passengers who flew to Havana on Alaska Airlines visited under a U.S. allowance for individual “people-to-people” educational travel.

Last week, changes to U.S. policy eliminated that category of Cuba travel and, as a result, the airline said it will redeploy the aircraft and other resources it had been devoting to the Havana route to other markets instead.

“Travel is about making connections, and we were honored to have played a role in helping people make personal connections by traveling between the U.S. and Cuba,” said Andrew Harrison, chief commercial officer for Alaska Airlines, in a statement, “We continually evaluate every route we fly to ensure we have the right number of seats to match the number of people who want to go there.”

Other airlines may announce service cancellations in response to the most recent restrictions placed on Cuba, but even before this JetBlue, American, Southwest had trimmed their Cuba service, while Frontier, Spirit and Silver Airways had dropped Cuba service completely.