First direct New York-to-Cuba flight begins

CNN
December 3, 1999

First direct New York-to-Cuba flight begins

                  NEW YORK (Reuters) -- The first direct charter flight from New York to
                  Havana in nearly 40 years was taking off Friday night as part of a program
                  that marks a tentative shift in U.S. policy toward the Communist government
                  of Cuba.

                  The flight, a Grupo Taca Airbus A320 chartered by Marazul Tours of
                  Weehawken, New Jersey, was carrying about 150 travelers from John F.
                  Kennedy International Airport to Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

                  The passengers are mostly Cuban-Americans visiting family and friends in
                  Cuba, which has been under a nearly 40-year embargo imposed soon after
                  the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro's Communist government to
                  power.

                  President Bill Clinton in March 1998 loosened policy toward Cuba and said
                  the United States would allow resumption of such charter flights for
                  Cuban-Americans making humanitarian visits, academics on research
                  projects and journalists.

                  The new weekly New York to Havana service grew as a direct result of that
                  change in policy. Similar charter flights from Miami to Cuba began in July
                  1998 after a two-year hiatus following the 1996 downing of two small U.S.
                  planes flown by Cuban exiles.

                  The most recent flare-up in the relations between the two countries came this
                  week after a five-year-old Cuban boy was found clinging to an inner tube in
                  Florida waters after surviving the sinking of a boat carrying Cuban
                  immigrants.

                  Cuba has demanded that the United States return the boy, Elian Gonzalez,
                  calling the case a "highly sensitive political problem." Attorneys for the boy's
                  U.S. relatives say he has a legal right to stay in the United States.

Authorities said the case of the boy has no connection to the charter flights
and did not directly threaten their resumption.