page_title: Freedom Flights
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Freedom Flights / Background
context_page_description: Freedom Flights transported Cubans to Miami twice daily, five times per week from 1965 to 1973. Its budget was about $12 million and it brought an estimated 300,000 refugees, making it the "largest airborne refugee operation in American history." The Freedom Flights were an important and unusual chapter of cooperation in the history of Cuban-American foreign relations, which is otherwise characterized by mutual distrust. The program changed the racial makeup of Miami and fueled the growth of the Cuban-American enclave there.
caption: Many Cubans traversed the Florida Straits to immigrate to the United States when the waiting list for the Freedom Flights grew.
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