Alaska Air where we Fly

Having made its 737-900ER a last Havana round-trip on January 22, Alaska will first use this aircraft to begin adding an eight-day run between Seattle and Orange County, California, said John Kirby, the airline's VP of Scheduling. Travellers with post January 22 can either be transferred to other carriers for free or get their funds back, the carrier said.

Alaska, headquartered in Seattle, is not the only carrier to distance itself from Cuba's first blueprints. In November 2016, American Airlines said that it would be reducing its number of services before Alaska even became operational. As a result, smaller carriers such as Silver Air and Spirit Airlines cancelled their services, and Frontier ended its Miami to Havana service in June.

Many people fought Alaska for the first 20 weekly departures to Havana, which the U.S. Department of Transportation issued under an arrangement with Cuba. Then it had to defend itself against a JetBlue challenge that asked why Alaska could not go into operation in November as initially planned. Alaska' s first plane to Havana, on January 5, led a TV crews and a commercial and education mission, which included the President of the University of Washington, Ana Mari Cauce, who was native to Cuba.

"In the beginning we saw great demand" when the early tourist seasons began last March, with Alaska's 178-seater aircraft "more than three quarter full" flying to Cuba, Kirby said. In the following months the flight capacities were 85 per cent. "There was no help from the Hurricane Season" because a record-breaking stormy weather has hit both Cuba and the southeast of the United States.

In June, the White House said it would revoke some of the policy that was pursued following the Obama administration's resumption of diplomatic ties with Cuba in 2015. Though Alaska now offers the only non-stop services to Havana from the West Coast, CAPA, an Australian aeronautical research company, says it was a small operator in the Cuban domestic aerospace industry.

In June, CAPA announced that American Airlines was the leader between the United States and Cuba with 34 per cent of available seat space, followed by Southwest, JetBlue, Delta, United and Alaska with 4.5 per cent of available seat space. Acquiring Virgin America has also means that Alaska has "more options than aircraft", which provides a good option for the plane that is now used on Los Angeles-Havana routes, Kirby said.