Cubana has announced that it will gradually resume certain domestic operations starting on 28 October after being grounded for more than five months.

The national airline will return to Cuban skies with two weekly flights from Havana to Guantanamo, two to Baracoa and one to Camaguey, although Cubana says that more destinations will be "announced when they become available".

All flights will be operated with an ATR 72-500 wet leased from South African carrier Solenta.

After a number of incidents and numerous flight cancellations, the Cuban Civil Aviation Authority IACC in May grounded Cubana’s Antonov An-158 fleet.

Cuba’s flag carrier has said that the lack of access to spare parts prevented it from making repairs locally.

Cubana then briefly offered a limited contingency network, operated with wet-leased equipment from Lithuania’s Avion Express, Italy’s Blue Panorama and Mexico’s Global Air. But one of the aircraft, a Global Air-operated Boeing 737-200, suffered a fatal crash after taking off from Havana on 18 May.

After the crash, Cubana completely stopped wet-leased domestic flying and returned the other aircraft to Avion Express and Blue Panorama.

Source: Cirium Dashboard