American Airlines began selling tickets this Monday for the direct route between Caracas and Miami that will begin operating on April 30, with a price greater than $1,000 for a single trip, which marks the reactivation of flights between Venezuela and the United States.
The first flight on the route, which has been suspended since 2019, will depart on Thursday, April 30 at 2:40 p.m. from Caracas (18:40 GMT) with a minimum cost of $1,143 per one-way trip, with an estimated duration of three hours and 33 minutes, according to the website and mobile application of the US airline.
While the first trip from Miami to the Venezuelan capital will occur on Friday, May 1 at 10:16 a.m. (2:16 p.m. GMT) with prices starting at $1,006, also for a single flight, according to the same sources.
The flights to Caracas will be operated by Envoy, a subsidiary of American Airlines, on an Embraer 175 aircraft, the US airline explained in a statement this Monday.
“American began operating in Venezuela in 1987 and was the largest US airline in the country before suspending service in 2019,” the company added.
The airline will restart direct flights between the United States and Venezuela in Florida, where more than two out of every five Venezuelans in the North American country live, an estimated 474,000, more than in any other state, according to the Pew Research Center.
With this, it is the first US airline company to resume direct flights between both countries, which had been suspended since 2019, by order of US President Donald Trump, during his first term (2017-2021).
Trump himself lifted the veto this year after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the US military on January 3, and the promotion as acting president of the then vice president, Delcy Rodríguez.
The US State Department lowered the alert for Americans wishing to go to Venezuela from level 4, maximum risk, to level 3 in March, asking them to “reconsider traveling” due to the risk of “crime, kidnapping, terrorism and poor health infrastructure.”
