A deepening fuel crisis in Cuba led Air Canada to cancel all upcoming flights to the island on Monday, but for many Canadians still on the ground it was vacation as usual.

Sitting outside a Havana bakery on Monday morning, Toronto resident Katarína Nemcova said the

situation for tourists was just fine. She said that despite some recent reports, the store shelves aren’t bare, the restaurants aren’t empty and there is still transportation available to get around.

“There are hundreds of us still here, not just in Havana, but people are still in Varadero and Cayo Coco, although they consolidated some hotels,” she said, showing her view of a busy Havana street over FaceTime.

Nemcova said she has been in Cuba since mid-January and staying at an Airbnb in the city instead of the usual resort. She said there have been long power outages since she arrived, but to her surprise, the area in which she’s staying had power all day on Sunday.

While electricity blackouts are nothing new in Cuba, its energy issues have worsened since President Donald Trump ramped up longstanding sanctions against the country following the U.S. invasion of Venezuala in early January. Trump has since cut off shipments of Venezuelan crude to Cuba and threatened tariffs against any country that tries to supply it with oil.

Canada’s latest travel advisory for Cuba, posted on Feb. 9 but unchanged from its previous advisory on Feb. 4, warned Canadians should exercise “a high degree of caution” while on the island due to worsening shortages of electricity, fuel and basic necessities including food, water and medicine, which it said can also affect resorts. It encourages travellers to sign onto the Registration of Canadians Abroad service and ensure they have appropriate travel insurance.

“The situation is unpredictable and could deteriorate, disrupting

flight availability on short notice,” the advisory said. That’s exactly what happened at noon on Monday when Air Canada announced it was suspending its service to Cuba due to the shortage of aviation fuel on the island. The airline’s flights to Cuba will only operate to pick up the roughly 3,000 customers it says are already in the country and return them back to Canada.

On Sunday, the Cuban government issued a warning to international airlines that they would no longer be able to refuel at the Jose Marti International airport in Havana as of Tuesday, Feb. 11.

Nemcova said her experience in Cuba has remained smooth, but only because she has money to afford resources on the island.

“They want tourism to continue because that is their main (source of) income at the moment,” she said about locals.

In recent days, that has included an “efficiency and facility consolidation plan” launched by the Cuban government that involved moving guests from some smaller hotels into larger resorts in an attempt to conserve energy resources.

The move is an attempt to keep as many hotels open as possible during the tourism high season and maximize revenues that are critical to the country’s struggling economy.

Suzanne Dion from Ottawa visited a resort in Cayo Santa Maria in the first week of February, said the situation for travellers was fine.

“Everything is great at the resorts, no shortage at all,” she said. But she noted the situation for Cubans in poorer villages was deteriorating.

“They need more Canadians to go over. That’s what they depend on, us Canadians,” she said, before learning of the Air Canada cancellations. She encouraged visitors to bring extra essentials like toiletries and over-the-counter medications to donate to locals.

Ryan Raye from St. Andrews, N.B., who has been in a house he owns in Playa, Havana since just after the new year, said that when his family leaves Cuba in a few weeks, they might not return “until the situation changes.”

He said the food and supply situation where they live is “very plentiful” and they can get almost everything they need with a quick cruise around the area.

However, the amount of traffic in the past few days has been greatly reduced, he said, adding that troops have been deployed at gas stations because citizens have been fighting at the gas pumps.

Julie Smigadis, owner of Ontario-based Travel Our World, an Envoy Canada-affiliated agency, said most clients booked to travel to Cuba in the coming weeks have not cancelled outright. Instead, she said, travellers are seeking more clarity and flexibility in case things deteriorate further.

“They’re not coming from a place of fear,” Smigadis said. “It’s more about understanding what’s going on and what their options are if things change…. It’s more of a ‘worst-case scenario, what are my options’ conversation.”

From the supply side, Smigadis said feedback from tour operators and resort partners suggests that, for now, most properties continue to operate largely as normal.

“From what we’re being told, a lot of the resorts we work with are operating as business as usual,” she said, adding that conditions vary by property and can shift quickly. She described the situation as one that requires close, day-to-day monitoring.

Several other Canadian airlines have made adjustments in light of the fuel crisis in Cuba. WestJet said all of its aircraft landing in the country already have enough fuel to depart, but both it and Sunwing are allowing customers to change their flights without penalty.

“Our focus continues to remain on the safety of our guests and our WestJetters,” the company said in a statement.

Air Transat, meanwhile, said it plans to operate as scheduled, including the possibility of making a technical stop along the route if necessary. It is also giving customers with trips booked up to Feb. 28 the ability to change their date or destination without penalty or receive a full refund.

Smigadis said Cuba’s tourism sector has faced persistent challenges since the COVID-19 pandemic, including staffing shortages and limited access to resources — constraints that have been exacerbated by recent fuel shortages. She said expectations for travellers need to be managed carefully, particularly when compared with destinations that have more robust supply chains.

“It’s a very different expectation compared with places like Mexico,” she said, pointing to structural limits on resources and external support.

For Canadians considering new bookings, Smigadis said she is urging restraint until the situation becomes clearer. “If someone called me today looking to book Cuba, I’d probably tell them to pause,” she said.

For those who do travel, she emphasized the importance of flexibility. “It’s imperative that bookings have flexibility built in,” she said, adding that access to a live travel agent, rather than an online booking system, can be critical if plans need to change.”

  • Air Canada suspends flights to Cuba amid fuel crisis
  • Cuban tourism in downward spiral as Trump cuts fuel supply