Air France Increases Service to Cuba

The French national airline has announced its plans to increase its offer to Havana in Cuba to 11 weekly frequencies from October 2015.

Air France began serving Havana in 1998, and has since become the leading airline between Cuba and Europe, supporting tourism development on the island.

The airline currently operates a Boeing 777-300 equipped with 468 seats daily from Paris Charles de Gaulle, and will add a further four weekly flights on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from winter 2015.

The daily service departs Paris CDG at 16:30pm, arriving into Havana at 20:25 the same day, while the return service departs Cuba at 22:50pm, arriving back into the French capital at 14:05pm the next day.

In 2014, Air France and Cubana de Aviacion – the Cuban national carrier, signed an interline partnership agreement allowing Cubana to operate flights to more than 30 Air France destinations in Europe and the Caribbean and enabling Air France to access Cubana de Aviacion’s domestic market.

The signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) created a base for extended cooperation, including discussions for a codeshare agreement and the means to further increase connecting traffic from Paris to Havana.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines also began linking Europe to the North American country in 2011, with a thrice weekly service between Amsterdam Schiphol and Havana on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays during the summer, increasing to four-times-weekly in the winter, to include service on Wednesdays.

Operated by an Airbus A330-200 aircraft with 243 seats, the service departs Amsterdam at 10:30am, arriving into Havana at 14:50pm the same day. The return journey departs at 16:45pm, arriving into the Netherlands capital at 08:20am the next day.

Together, Air France-KLM offers a total of 15 weekly flights, with up to three daily frequencies between Europe and Cuba in the winter.

In 2014 almost 420,000 passengers flew between Europe and Cuba with the Franco-Dutch holding company.

Poppy Marello

Poppy joined the Routesonline team after successfully completing a degree in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. Poppy has a passion for…