Cuba?!!!

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paulwerbin

Headed to Andromeda
A trip in my plane to Cuba has been on my wish list for a long time. Now if Governmental relations arw softening up I bet it would be a lot easier to organize a trip. Too late for this year but I am thinking that there might be a few of us that are interested enough to look into a Spring 2015 flying visit to Cuba. There will be a few items that would need lead time, like avgas and visa maybe, so pretty much now just asking..... anyone interested?
 
A trip to Cuba has been on my wish list also. Can you say Cohiba? I don't think we will be able to visit as tourists quite yet, but maybe in a year or two (which coincidentally will be around the same time my mouse will be back in the air). Can't seem to make the case to fly to Cuba in a C-150, not enough fuel to get back home!
 
I wouldn't get too enthused. Did you see the results of the last election? My humble opinion is; it won't happen. Would I like to fly to Cuba? Maybe. If the they had some nice general aviation airports. But, I don't think that is the case. I'm pretty sure most of America will fly down commercial if relations are ever normalize. I'm also pretty sure that G.A. is years from entering the country.
 
I believe at times Cuba has allowed general aviation overflights. Beech talk may have more information on Cuba, but I think they would welcome general aviation flights.
 
The socioeconomic level of the average Cuban citizen is extremely poor. $20 per month average income. $65 a month for the highly educated professionals. I have been to India, China, Russia and Indonesia, they are much the same. These people (most of the world's population) could not imagine making $100 per week.
 
There are 2-3 generations of Cubans who have never had a job in the traditional, US sense. When I opened factories in DR, Haiti, Jamaica, etc we had a devil of a time getting workers to show up on time and perform routine duties; the things that are ingrained in US workers. In a tourist-centric Cuba, it will take about a decade for the employees to catch on. Just about the time the businesses start throwing off some profit, the communist govt will nationalize industry. GA infrastructure is probably non-existent today, and their airforce appears to be a bit trigger happy when encountering little airplanes. I like the idea of sticking Putin in the eye by making friends with his best buds.

Rap
 
mvanover said:
I wouldn't get too enthused. Did you see the results of the last election? My humble opinion is; it won't happen. Would I like to fly to Cuba? Maybe. If the they had some nice general aviation airports. But, I don't think that is the case. I'm pretty sure most of America will fly down commercial if relations are ever normalize. I'm also pretty sure that G.A. is years from entering the country.
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I won't go until human rights are observed. Don't want to make the thread political.

I was was there in 1998. Although I was not allowed to travel freely, what I saw shocked me. Cuba is stuck in 1959. There are no GA facilities on the island. We are years away from making this a reality.

Only people that fly around the island are military, or high level government folks.
 
I know of some medical groups that have been down and did a joint information sharing project. While I wish we could fly down and enjoy an unexplored vacation spot I know this is not the reality of life there. In time, and showing interest we may be able to help make changes and enjoy ourselves. I will look into it for real and see if there is even avgas there and any facilities that could be useful.
 
Cuba just got harder. Regulations starting Thursday say no travel if you wanted to stay in big (read government owned/supported/etc.) hotels, only privately owned (read supporting the people not the government) AirBnB type places. No doubt plenty of other details in the "prohibited" category now. Wonder what department has been funded to "ramp check" visitors in Cuba on this?

This will probably make the companies that "help arrange your Cuba GA trip" for those that don't want to slosh through books of reg's on what can/can't be done.

Has anyone in BAC flown GA to Cuba yet (since Cuba was "opened up")?
 
I did not fly GA on my trip in August to Cuba. The fees associated with GA were just too high to be worth the effort. I did fly commercially under the “Pre-Trump” rules. Easy and a really great trip. Hopefully this will resolve again soon. I know that there was an expectation that the fees would come down when/if GA picked up. I am glad I made the trip when I did.
 
I am heading to Marsh Harbor on great Abaco in the Bahamas on December 22/23 for a week. If anyone else will be there we might be able to catch. Probably flying back to Virginia Dec 30/31.
 
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