Cuba might just be the most talked about destination for Americans after rules loosened up on visiting the island nation. Find out about the changes in an article from the Washington Post.

For Americans, visiting Cuba is a bit of a pain since currently only charters fly there from the US. For those that have visited, it usually meant flying to the Caribbean and catching a flight to Havana from there.

As of this morning, one online travel agency is now selling flights to Cuba from the U.S. 

According to USA Today, CheapAir.com is claiming to be the first OTA “to allow U.S. travelers to book flights between the U.S. and Cuba in a single online transaction. The option began at 8 a.m. ET Thursday morning, when CheapAir enabled booking for flights between U.S. cities and Havana”.

This is pretty intriguing as I’ve long wanted to visit Cuba. However, I’ve never heard of CheapAir.com and when I did searches a few time I got no results. I tried again hours later and got this message:

Can’t keep up with search volume? Odd. You’d think that the site would’ve anticipated an uptick in searches when word got out about the booking possibilities…

More about potential flight bookings:

When booking a flight to Cuba on CheapAir.com, you’ll be prompted to click a box where you’ll select which of the 12 categories you qualify under to fly to Cuba.

Since only charters from the U.S. to Cuba, CheapAir.com “will piece together two tickets in a single purchase” according to USA Today”.  So basically, they will book you on a flight from the U.S. to the Caribbean and then from that destination to Cuba. USA Today mentions flying  from the U.S. to Mexico and then on to Cuba in their article.

There can be complications with this kind of booking though since you’re essentially booking two separate flights.

Checked luggage will not go all of the way through to the final destination, cancellation and change fees (if needed) could be double and a flight delay could cause you to miss a flight. In the case of a missed flight, the second airline won’t have to accommodate you since they had nothing to do with the delay.

The way CheapAir.com plans to book flights is something that (I’d assume) we could just do on our own. We could most likely use our miles or buy a flight to Mexico, Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, Dominican Republic and many others. Then purchase a flight to Cuba.

I did a quick search online and came across CubaJet. I use their site to search for a flight from Cancun to Havana for two adults and one child and got a pretty reasonable price of $990.30 total.

It seems like a pretty smart move by CheapAir.com to offer one stop shopping for flights to Cuba but I think many of us could probably figure this out on our own.

Are you interested in visiting Cuba? I for sure would love to go soon!

Find out more about booking flights to Cuba with CheapAir.com from USA Today here.