Tourism, Geopolitics, Cuba and the New Airbus Airliner

In case someone wasn't watching, a recent aviation development looks to help Cuba and other Caribbean countries to get by even better without so many US tourist dollars. Airbus has recently rolled out a new airliner design that has even more seating capacity than Boeing's famous 747. While chances for sales to US airlines might be iffy, these airliners are likely to find themselves in service with such carriers as Air France, Iberia and other European air carriers.

Does this have implications for Caribbean tourist destinations? You bet it does. That means more tourists flying for less expense than they would have if they'd taken an older, less fuel-efficient airliner.

Even now, as US tourists frequent such destinations as Martinique, Barbados, and Guadeloupe less often, their numbers are replaced by Europeans who fly in to enjoy Caribbean warmth. The falling dollar is no longer the undisputed king of Caribbean currencies; the Euro is the strongest pretender since the heyday of the British pound before World War II. Hotels remain open, restaurants continue to sever hungry patrons, and the beaches remain crowded. There is little or nothing preventing the new Airbus airliner from landing at Havana's Jose Marti or at Varadero.

Cosmic Commie-killers of the Caribbean like Gee Dubya Bush, Tom De Lay, Ros-Lehtinen, and the Diaz-Balart brothers may tighten travel restrictions for US tourists and Cuban emigre family members even further, but thanks to developments like the new Airbus, it's unlikely to have the desired impact as Cuban hotels fill up with vacationers from countries that respect Gee Dubya's Cuban blockade not a whit.

biggest customer is Emirates from Dubai.

So, not only European airlines are interested. The capacity will be 550 seats (standard), and it will be the first plane with less than 3 liters fuel per passenger and 100 km.

Problem: Must runways in the US are not suited for this 70m wing span plane...

.. and ended internal dollar transactions. The so called "dollar stores" are now "Euro stores". Cuban immigrants wishing to remit money to their families back home must now do so in Euros.

expand its airport to handle this beast, but it's interesting to think that Cuba could be the new hub for the Carribbean.

All those Euros flooding Havana...

I doubt that Cuba will ever become a new tourist hub of the Caribbean as long as it requires the sorts of visas it does at present while places like the Bahamas, Martinique, and Barbados don't. Having never traveled to the Dominican Republic, I don't know what they require of European visitors.

The point I'd really like to make is that it seems that the US travel restrictions are becoming less and less relevant, no matter what the wishes of the Cosmic Commie-killers of the Caribbean. The US dollar is now a far more shaky and wobbly currency that it was when Gee Dubya assumed power. The European economy is strong; it may risk recession if the dollar tanks--but so does that of the US. If G*d snapped His fingers and moved the United States to another planet in another Galaxy far, far away, the world economy would be far more able to get by without Uncle Sam than it was back when Cosmic Commie-killer RWR took over from James Earl Carter.

I am convinced that if Castro allowed economic reforms to allow Cuba to have even the same sort of mixed economy Yugoslavia had under Marshall Tito, the Cuban commonwealth would flourish, far fewer Cubans would be inclined to leave, and the exile lobby would look as ridiculous as the pro-Kuomintang lobby did by 1975.