JetBlue Flight 387 was a scheduled international commercial passenger flight from

Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport is a major public airport in Broward County, Florida, United States. It is one of three airports serving the Miami metropolitan area. The airport is off Interstate 595, Interstate 95, U.S. ...

Broward County, Florida Broward County ( , ) is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's second-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with over 1.94 m ...

to Abel Santamaría Airport in

Santa Clara, Cuba Santa Clara is the capital city of the Cuban province of Villa Clara. It is centrally located in the province and Cuba. Santa Clara is the fifth-most populous Cuban city, with a population of nearly 250,000. History Santa Clara was founde ...

operated by

JetBlue JetBlue Airways Corporation (stylized as jetBlue) is a major American low cost airline, and the seventh largest airline in North America by passengers carried. The airline is headquartered in the Long Island City neighborhood of the New York C ...

, an American low-cost carrier. The route's first flight on August 31, 2016 was the first regularly scheduled American passenger flight to Cuba since 1961. The

Airbus A320 The Airbus A320 family is a series of narrow-body airliners developed and produced by Airbus. The A320 was launched in March 1984, first flew on 22 February 1987, and was introduced in April 1988 by Air France. The first member of the famil ...

(N834JB ''Keep Blue and Carry On'') departed Fort Lauderdale shortly before 10:00am and landed in Santa Clara at approximately 11:00am local time.

Significance

On December 17, 2014, a change in U.S.-Cuba relations was announced by U.S. President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

and Cuban President

Raul Castro Raul, Raúl and Raül are the Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Galician, Asturian, Basque, Aragonese, and Catalan forms of the Anglo-Germanic given name Ralph or Rudolph. They are cognates of the French Raoul. Raul, Raúl or Raül may r ...

, with the former declaring that trade and travel sanctions failed to bring democracy to Cuba and that getting the communist regime in Havana to change its political behavior is better served by economic and diplomatic engagement rather than isolation. In the context of the

Cuban Thaw The Cuban thaw ( es, Deshielo cubano) was the normalization of Cuba–United States relations that began in December 2014 ending a 54-year stretch of hostility between the nations. In March 2016, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president ...

, Washington and Havana announced an agreement to resume regular airline service to Cuba in December 2015, with the agreement coming into effect in February 2016. Jimmy Carter had allowed charter flights in 1977, but these were cumbersome and very chaotic with a lot of paperwork, so the US Department of Transportation found it necessary to enter into negotiations with Cuban civil aviation authorities to revive regular airline service between the two countries to make it much easier for Americans to travel to Cuba for non-touristic reasons.

References

{{reflist 2016 in Cuba

387 __NOTOC__ Year 387 ( CCCLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Augustus and Eutropius (or, less frequently, year 1 ...

2016 in Florida Cuba–United States relations 2016 in aviation