AP reporter returns to Cuba on 1st commercial flight from US

SANTA CLARA, Cuba (AP) — 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.

After more than 50 years without regular air service, Cubans will be able to visit family in the U.S. on the same commercial airlines that serve the rest of the world.

The mood aboard Wednesday's flight from Fort Lauderdale was celebratory, and tinged with imagery from the era when Cuba was the United States' tropical backyard escape.

A good number of those who were neither reporters nor airline employees had no idea they were going to be aboard a historic flight, and were alternately taken back and impressed as Foxx delivered a short talk about what he described as an important step forward in Obama's policy of normalization.

The Cuban and American government publicly insist that the U.S. formal legal ban on tourism remains a high barrier for U.S. visitors because it requires them to engage in one of 12 legally approved categories of activities including "people-to-people" educational travel.

Beaches aside, the irony of Obama's opening up Cuba travel is that it allows adventurous Americans to fly direct to Cuba and cruise around on their own, independent of government tour guides and bus drivers who make sure they hew to a state-approved itinerary.