page_title: Cuban thaw
section_title: Resumption of mail service and regular airline service
hierarchical_section_title: Cuban thaw / Normalization of relations / Resumption of mail service and regular airline service
caption_attribution_description: Delta returns to Cuba after 55-year hiatus
context_page_description: The Cuban thaw was the warming 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 to visit Cuba since 1928.
  On December 17, 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced the beginning of the process of normalizing relations between Cuba and the United States. The normalization agreement was secretly negotiated in preceding months, facilitated by Pope Francis and largely hosted by the Government of Canada. Meetings were held in both Canada and the Vatican City. The agreement would see the lifting of some U.S. travel restrictions, fewer restrictions on remittances, U.S. banks' access to the Cuban financial system, and the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Havana and the Cuban embassy in Washington, which both closed in 1961 after the breakup of diplomatic relations as a result of Cuba's close alliance with the USSR.
  On April 14, 2015, the Obama administration announced that Cuba would be removed from the United States State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
context_section_description: On December 11, 2015, the United States and Cuba agreed to restore postal service between the two countries for the first time since 1963. A week later, on December 17, 2015–the first anniversary of D17–an agreement was reached to re-establish regularly scheduled flights between the U.S. and Cuba for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The agreement, which allows for 110 flights a day, took effect on February 16, 2016. Mail service between the two countries resumed on March 17, 2016.
  On July 7, 2016, it was announced that eight US airline companies had been given tentative approval to fly to airports in Cuba and that flights, which would be limited to educational trips, would begin as early as September. On August 31, 2016, JetBlue became the first US commercial airline in more than 50 years to land a plane carrying US passengers at a Cuban airport when Flight 387 took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida and landed in Santa Clara, Cuba. More flights have since followed, and two planes from JetBlue and American Airlines also made history by landing in the capital city of Havana on November 28, 2016, marking the first time in more than 50 years that a US commercial flight landed in Havana.
  By November 2017, however, several airline companies had quit doing flights to Cuba.
caption: Delta Air Lines Flight 639,[65] the airline's first flight to Cuba in 55 years, arriving at José Martí International Airport
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