(AFP) – The first direct flight between the United States and Venezuela in seven years was set to take off Thursday, a new sign of a thaw after Washington deposed leftist leader Nicolas Maduro. The American Airlines flight is scheduled to take off at 10:16 am (1416 GMT) from Miami en route to Caracas, where the United States has resumed diplomatic relations after years of tension.
To mark the occasion, representatives of the US government, the City of Miami, and the Venezuelan ambassador to Washington, Felix Plasencia, will greet passengers before the flight departs Gate D55. Media are expected to assemble when the flight lands more than three hours later at Simon Bolivar Airport, better known as Maiquetia. The inaugural flights will feature a special Venezuelan menu including corn pancakes known as cachapas and a Venezuelan-style chicken salad with mayonnaise, according to the airline.
Some 1.2 million Venezuelans live in the United States, and the thaw is expected to increase the US business presence in the South American nation, which has the world’s largest proven gas reserves. But President Donald Trump has also been moving aggressively to remove Venezuelans from the United States, terminating a program that shielded migrants from deportation back to the crime-ridden nation.
US forces on January 3 carried out a deadly raid in Caracas, snatching longtime US nemesis Maduro and flying him and his wife to New York to face charges of drug trafficking, which they deny. Maduro was replaced by his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who has largely cooperated with the United States despite her ideological background. Trump has voiced satisfaction with her policies toward US companies and has tried to enforce compliance by threatening violence. Venezuela has moved to open the oil and mining sectors to the private sector. Trump, in turn, has started an easing of sanctions on Venezuela, with measures imposed personally on Rodriguez dropped.
American Airlines subsidiary Envoy Air will run the flight daily to and from Caracas and Miami, a hub for Venezuelans and other Latin Americans. The company said it plans to start a second daily round-trip flight starting May 21. American Airlines, which is based in Texas and has a large network in Latin America, started flights to Venezuela in 1987 and carried the highest number of passengers between the two countries. It ended flights in 2019 as relations deteriorated, with the United States and other Western and Latin American nations declaring Maduro to be illegitimate after an election marred by irregularities.
The State Department continues to call on Americans to reconsider travel to Venezuela due to widespread crime but in March it ended its blanket warning against any travel. The new flight comes despite trouble in the aviation industry, which has been hit hard by a sharp rise in oil prices after the United States and Israel attacked Iran.
© 2024 AFP
