A Revival of Key West-to-Cuba Travel For the first time in more than 50 years, a commercial passenger aircraft has flown from the island of Key West, Fla., to Havana, Cuba, reestablishing the direct connection the two cities shared in the early 1950s. On the morning of Dec. 30, United States Customs and Border Protection gave the final approval necessary for a small Cessna Conquest II air craft, owned by Key West Executive Air Charter, to take off from the Key West International Airport. The flight carried a handful of members of the Florida Keys Tropical Research Ecological Exchange Institute, which organizes educational trips to Cuba for Unites States citizens. Before the Cuban revolution in 1959, Havana was an easy ferry or plane flight away for Key West residents and visitors. In October 2011, the Obama administration began allowing licensed agencies and organizations, like the institute, to take United States travelers to Cuba on "people to people" cultural exchange programs. Limited commercial flights also resumed for that purpose. "We're closer to Cuba than Miami," Craig Cates, the mayor of Key West and a passenger on the Dec. 30 flight, told The Associated Press. It's going to be great for the city. Cultural exchange, historic exchange, to be able to go back and forth directly. Still, it was more than two years before any charter company could obtain all of the necessary permits and approvals from both the United States and Cuban governments, Carolann Sharkey, the institute's trip coordinator, said. If not for the assistance of Marazul Charters, a government-licensed travel service, and Caribbean Direct International, a cargo company that served as a liaison among all the entities involved, the flight would not have gotten off the ground, she said. Through the exchanges, the group hopes to learn more about the Cubans" use of plants in healing, to share organic agricultural aids and to assist with environmental, ecological and endemic species preservation. "We're doing some really meaningful things there," Ms. Sharkey said, "meeting Cubans at botanical gardens, organic farms and cultural centers." Although the approval of the Key West International Airport as a port of entry for Cuba was smooth and "moved along quickly," Peter Horton, the airport's director, said in an email, there are no similar flights to Cuba scheduled to leave at this time. And whether the flights would become a regular occurrence was still unclear. "There is a market here in Key West for similar air traffic to Cuba," Mr. Horton said, "but because of the restrictions that are currently in place that market is extremely limited. It has been estimated that only 5,000 residents here in the lower Florida Keys would qualify to fly to Cuba.