FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Are US-Cuba award tix illegal? (Citizenship, FFP and airline all non-US)
Old Oct 28, 2007, 11:55 am
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graraps
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Are US-Cuba award tix illegal? (Citizenship, FFP and airline all non-US)

Title says it all, really.
I'm not a US citizen and, courtesy of a very popular recent thread , will be finding myself on US soil for the first time in the near future. Unless I manage to work something out with a friend who is in PHL for a few months, and owing to a combination of political and cultural reasons that I won't discuss outside OMNI, I'm not really interested in visiting the US.
However, I could use this as an opportunity to go to a couple of places that I actually want to visit. And Cuba is one of these places.
AFAIK due to legal restrictions, no airline publishes a fare between US and Cuba, so a paid tkt is out of the question. I know I could fly via Canada on separate tix or get a charter of some sort or another through CUN or something, but it sounds a bit complicated and I'd rather fly a semi-logical routing with a semi-credible airline if at all possible.
This combination can be found in COPA Airlines (CM), an airline that has recently become a part of Skyteam, where most of my miles reside through OK+.
Does anyone know whether there is any legal barrier for a Greek citizen to buy a NYC-HAV tkt on a Panamanian airline using miles accrued in a Czech FFP?
I always confuse the poor souls at the OK+ service centre with my enquiries, so I'd rather run this with the FlyerTalk experts before speaking to them.
Any ideas?
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