New Commercial Flights Mean Big Change for US-Cuba Relations

SANTA CLARA, Cuba— It took an hour and a $330 paper check to buy the printed blue ticket for my one-way charter flight from Havana to Miami, the last I will ever take.Check-in meant nearly two hours in a line that almost spilled out the terminal door...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx deplanes from the JetBlue flight 387 at the airport in Santa Clara, Cuba, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016. The arrival of the flight opens a new era of U.S.-Cuba travel with about 300 flights a week connecting the U.S. with an island cut off from most Americans by the 55-year-old trade embargo on Cuba and formal ban on U.S. citizens engaging in tourism on the island. Alejandro Ernesto, Pool via AP

SANTA CLARA, Cuba—It took an hour and a $330 paper check to buy the printed blue ticket for my one-way charter flight from Havana to Miami, the last I will ever take.

Check-in meant nearly two hours in a line that almost spilled out the terminal doors. I barely made it aboard my 45-minute flight Sunday.

I came home to Cuba in seat 4B Wednesday on the first commercial flight from the U.S. in more than half a century. The electronic ticket cost $98.90 and took less than three minutes to buy on JetBlue’s website. For an extra $35, I hauled back 100 pounds of goods that are nearly unobtainable in Cuba: porcelain kitchen tiles, ice cube trays, a designer dress for my fiancee.

Multiply those numbers by roughly 300 flights a week and you have the makings of a sea change in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, perhaps the most important development since Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama declared detente nearly two years ago.

JetBlue flight 387 passengers hold up representations of Cuba's national flag, just before touching down at the airport in Santa Clara, Cuba, Aug. 31, 2016. AP Photo/Michael Weissenstein