A Cubana de Aviacion flight was forced to return to Madrid

The Airbus A340-313X is operated by Cubana de Aviación The flight from Madrid, Spain, to Santiago de Cuba was diverted to the home airport due to an “engine technical problem” on Tuesday, according to an official account from Spanish aviation regulators. In social network.

“The crew of a flight from Madrid to Cuba, over the Atlantic, decided to return to Madrid after receiving indications of a technical problem with one of the engines,” the release noted.

According to air traffic controllers, before landing back in Madrid, the plane “will have to wait to lose weight and be able to make a safe landing.”

“Once the crew informs us they are ready after a 40-minute wait, we position them for a direct approach, landing on runway 18R and landing without incident,” the release noted.

Flights from Spain to Cuba have been reduced in recent months. Spanish airline IberojetCuban migrants announced this month that they were deciding to suspend access to the island, which is one of the cheapest. All your flights to Cuba.

A step publication On the social networks of Viajes On Time agency, “Iberojet is canceling its operations to Cuba and the last flight will be on January 10.”

Iberojet, formerly known as Evelop, has announced the cancellation of its flights to Santiago de Cuba.Opened in November 2022 with two weekly frequencies last October due to “operational reasons”.

Sources familiar with the issue told DIARIO DE CUBA The reason for the cancellation was low number of flights and the general atmosphere of the destination, Santiago de Cuba.

“It’s a problem with the destination, its hotel infrastructure and lack of activities for visitors. Iberojet wants to go beyond the so-called ‘ethnic traveler’ to bring in tourists and Santiago is not ready to respond,” the sources added. Consulted.

In the same period, it became known Spanish Iberia will also reduce its frequencies to Havana to three per week.

Last June, Spanish specialized media Reporter He promised that The airlines Iberia, World2fly, Iberojet and Air Europa will report the lowest occupancy on flights from Spain to Cuba.

“The percentage of seats sold for these flights from Spain is the same among the four aforementioned airlines, which do not occupy half of the seats and make this route one of the biggest loss-making routes among their Latin American connections,” he pointed out. The aforementioned publication specializes in tourism topics.

Preliminary tourism figures for October in Cuba indicate 158,902 visitors for the month.1,973,060 in the January-October period.

For economist Pedro Monreal, with two months to go until the end of 2023, the sector’s vaunted recovery is clearly “very fragile”.

In a recent analysis of Cuba’s tourism situation, the analyst considered, “In 2023 The failure to comply with tourism plans that have already occurred in 2022 is reiterated, making the investment frenzy associated with tourism more questionable.It diverts urgently needed resources from other activities.

Due to low tourist arrivals to Cuba, seven out of ten rooms in government-run hotels were empty in the first half of 2023.

In a recent article published in the DIARIO DE CUBA, economist Emilio Morales predicted that “with luck they could reach 2,400,000 million, a figure similar to that reached 14 years ago in 2009.”