A pleasant surprise ... and a money-saving tip (Air Jamaica)

Member Name: dee9605

Product:	Air Jamaica
Date:	20/05/03 (824 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Efficient and friendly

Disadvantages: Bit hassly returning from havana

After reading the reviews both here and other places, I had been nervous about booking up with Cubana Airways from a safety perspective. But the simple fact of the matter was that we wanted to fly direct rather than via Madrid (Iberia) or via Paris (Air France) and currently the only companies that fly direct to Havana are Air Jamaica and Cubana..the week we wanted to go there was a saving of £150 per person between the price quoted by Air Jamaica's direct sales office (I couldn't find tickets for Air Jamaica on any of the travel websites) and the price quoted for Cubana on lastminute.com., and we could not ignore that.

So... very nervously, we turned up at the airport. I had thought it was odd that we were leaving from Heathrow as I had thought that Cubana flew from Gatwick.. it was odd - it was the same Air Jamaica flight I had been quoted for but sold as a code share! I was very relieved, not only were we going to be on Air Jamaica's self-titled 'champagne flights' rather than possibly risk our safety but we'd got our flights at a great price.

On the Air Jamaica front, the flight was delayed both out (3 hours) and in (1.5 hours) . Also although the flight is direct to Havana it is via Kingston on the way back and you have to get out of the plane at 1am in the morning. I think they are a fairly young company so dont have the money to have more planes. On board the service is excellent and very friendly. Lots of champagne, good films... and the stewardesses even lead some in seat aerobics!!

P.S. I have heard since then that these days Cubana lease from a French company for the London to Havana route and only use the old planes in South America and internally so maybe it's not so risky after all. This makes sense as it is probably very expensive for them to run and maintain an airline in and out of Europe and I cannot see the English package holiday companies using 'Cubana' if it were that dangero
us...

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