Conviasa to resume Caracas–Havana flights twice weekly despite Jet A-1 shortage at Cuban airports
Why It MattersFuel-supply gaps at a destination push carriers toward round-trip tankering or third-country stops, which raise trip costs and limit payload, so only state-backed or commercially essential routes tend to keep operating.
What happened
Venezuelan state-owned airline Conviasa has announced it will restart service between Caracas and Havana from Friday, November 13, after about two weeks of suspension linked to an aviation fuel crisis affecting ten Cuban airports. The airline plans two flights per week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, and said on its official Instagram account that interested passengers can buy tickets. The route had been on hold for about two weeks while the airline concentrated on domestic operations in Venezuela.
On October 30, the Cuban Air Navigation Company (ECNA) issued NOTAMs A3875/26 to A3884/26 stating "JET A1 FUEL NOT AVBL" at major terminals including Havana's José Martí International Airport, Varadero, Santa Clara, Camagüey, Holguín and Santiago de Cuba. The Jet A-1 supply restrictions are officially in place until December 1. They do not formally close the airports or automatically cancel international flights, but they require airlines to operate without relying on local fuel. Conviasa has not publicly explained how it will handle fuel for its Cuba flights.
Other carriers have adapted in different ways. According to 14ymedio, Copa Airlines has been loading extra fuel in Panama, Air Europa makes a technical stop in Punta Cana before returning to Madrid, and Air China has been using Nassau, Bahamas, which led to cancellations in October and an extraordinary flight to repatriate stranded passengers.
A route that has been adjusted before
Conviasa has reworked this route more than once this year. In February it rescheduled connections between Caracas, Havana and Managua over several days because of fuel restrictions in Cuba and Nicaragua's immigration requirements. In June it suspended the route after Maiquetía airport closed because of earthquakes in Venezuela.
The Caracas–Havana route is also commercially important because many Cubans use it to buy goods in Venezuela, such as hardware items and solar panels, for resale in Cuba.
Cuba's shrinking air connectivity
The resumption comes amid a sharp decline in air connectivity with Cuba. Iberia has suspended its direct Madrid–Havana route until the end of June 2027, Delta ended its Atlanta service in June and reduced Miami frequencies, and at least 11 airlines stopped operating at some point in 2026, with forecasts of more than 1,700 flight cancellations.
From January to August 2026, Cuba received only 450,353 visitors, down 64.4% from the same period in 2025. In September, 27,354 foreign tourists arrived, the lowest figure for that month outside the pandemic years.
Industry impact & what to watch
A destination-side fuel outage does not close an airport, but it moves the whole fuel-and-cost problem onto the airline. Carriers can tanker enough fuel at origin for the round trip, which works on short sectors, or add a technical stop elsewhere. Both options raise cost per flight and can reduce the passengers or cargo an aircraft carries, so the effect shows up in capacity and economics before it shows up as a formal cancellation.
Under those conditions, the routes that keep operating tend to be those with a strong commercial or strategic reason to exist. Conviasa's Caracas–Havana service, tied to a trade flow of goods bought in Venezuela for resale in Cuba, fits that description, while carriers with thinner leisure demand have pulled back.
The next dated marker is December 1, the date until which the Jet A-1 restrictions are officially in place. How Conviasa actually fuels its Wednesday and Friday rotations is the detail that would show what the resumed schedule costs to run.
