Off to Cuba

Lance F

Lance F

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Lance F
After an overnight Wednesday in Key West Sue and I will fly in the Mooney to Cuba for 6 days to check out the place. We will be part of a Caribbean Flying Adventures group. We'll fly into MUVR Varadero.
Cuba has virtually no experience with GA (or Americans for that matter). Should be a fun adventure.
 
Will await a full report, have a cubana in the family who wonders about going back to the homeland.
 
Say "hi" to Bernie Sanders ;)
 
There's a good write-up from a guy who's been doing some retirement flying on his EAB airplane. They took a friends Cirrus for this one, but it's a fairly detailed trip report.

http://puertoricoflyer.com/Files/Adventure Stories/CUBA Trip - Flying.pdf

BLUF, they had to use some sort of religious pilgrimage loophole to be able to fly into the place and do what they really wanted to do (recreational tourism). Things are still fairly spartan in terms of GA paperwork and logistics. Sounds like a relative PITA. But that's just me since I grew up in PR; Cuba and the rest of the Greater Antilles are all clones of each other climate, historic and topographically, so it's a snooze for me. For a gringo it would be a worthwhile adventure I suppose.

Good luck with the trip and safe flying!
 
Lance F said:
After an overnight Wednesday in Key West Sue and I will fly in the Mooney to Cuba for 6 days to check out the place. We will be part of a Caribbean Flying Adventures group. We'll fly into MUVR Varadero.
Cuba has virtually no experience with GA (or Americans for that matter). Should be a fun adventure.
Click to expand...

Say hi to Rick for me and have fun.
 
hindsight2020 said:
There's a good write-up from a guy who's been doing some retirement flying on his EAB airplane. They took a friends Cirrus for this one, but it's a fairly detailed trip report.

http://puertoricoflyer.com/Files/Adventure Stories/CUBA Trip - Flying.pdf

BLUF, they had to use some sort of religious pilgrimage loophole to be able to fly into the place and do what they really wanted to do (recreational tourism). Things are still fairly spartan in terms of GA paperwork and logistics. Sounds like a relative PITA. But that's just me since I grew up in PR; Cuba and the rest of the Greater Antilles are all clones of each other climate, historic and topographically, so it's a snooze for me. For a gringo it would be a worthwhile adventure I suppose.

Good luck with the trip and safe flying!
Click to expand...

I would think the trip would be worthwhile just to see all the beautiful antique cars on the road!
 
There is a good write up about a GA flight to Cunpba on the AOPA board.

The biggest takeaway I got from that was that their exit system (bureaucratic) worked okay for scheduled airline style flights, but needed some tweaks to accommodate GA. And that the fuel crew needed an updat brief that we need 100LL, not JetA.

Enjoy your flight Lance! We look forward to the write up of your adventure.
 
Good thing you're going with Rick, he's got a good handle on dealing with the officials. If it wasn't for him I'd be a bit concerned about getting ass raped with sudden fees and gouges to get your departure clearance. The yachts visiting Hemminway Marina are reporting some pretty outrageous behavior, even more than before.
 
Good luck have fun ,have a friend that did the trip,with a group. Can't wait to do the trip myself.
 
Very cool. Avoid the Bay of Pigs.
 
My wife and I visited Cuba this last summer. We flew commercial, but would love to fly our Mooney there. The trip was wonderful and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. The people are friendly and the government was very accommodating. We travel regularly. We've been to over 50 countries in the last 10 years. And we really enjoyed Cuba.

Looking forward to the trip report.
 
Report posted
Cuba by Mooney (long)
 
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