Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Time Pressure; Communication Breakdown; Troubleshooting; Workload
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Flight Crew Requested ATC Assistance / Clarification
Equipment / Tooling; Weather; Human Factors
There are several issues that are concerning Havana.The company page has Emphasis Items; one being 'Do not fly near or overfly the city of Havana.' The city of Havana sits off the end of runway 6 (the preferred runway) to the left. It also states not to overfly the prohibited areas. The prohibited areas are over the city and to the southwest over the military airfield San Antonio De Los Banos. On page it is stated right traffic patterns are prohibited. If you are visual and go missed (because of an unstable approach or maybe an aircraft or vehicle on the runway where are you going? You can't go right. It is prohibited. You can't go left. It is prohibited. Where do you go? Not really sure. I was told by my FO (First Officer) that this happened to him and that the tower gave them a turn to the right to intercept the ILS again. But right traffic patterns are prohibited. It is possible to do a right-hand traffic pattern and avoid San Antonio De Los Banos except for the prohibition.Secondly; we were down there last night. We landed around twilight. There was a thunderstorm off the end of runway 6. We landed uneventfully and taxied to the gate. They brought out a hotspot to load the iPads. It did not work. They told us they had been having problems with it. They brought out a phone hot spot and that did not work either. So we were working off of the paper flight plan they printed for us. There is no cell service there. There is spotty ACARS coverage. We hand loaded the flight plan into our iPads. Now we were wondering where that storm was that we saw on our way in. We have no idea. We have no radar to look at. We asked the tower about the weather and their response was; 'The weather is good.' It was completely dark and we could see nothing. We taxied out to the end of the runway (6) lines up and told tower we need a minute to look at the weather. Of course; all we can really see is the sweep of the radar. We dial it out to 40 miles and look. We see a storm around 12-15 miles out but the departure has a turn to the left around 12 miles. So we take off. Departure tell us we can deviate left but not for 10 miles. Ok. So at 10 miles we ask for left they give us a heading of 020 and as we turn we see that the storm is basically surrounding us. We pick the narrowest green area to fly thru. It was not comfortable. We had St Elmos fire. We had updrafts. We did not emerge until we reached our cruising altitude of FL250.First someone needs to look at the company pages and give us an option if you go around but are not doing the published missed approach. Secondly there has to be a way to check the weather before you takeoff. I understand the internet is weak. I personally would like to see the radar. I'm not really comfortable with talking to someone on the phone about it but I guess that is better than nothing. Some way; when it's dark or perhaps overcast; so that you have an idea of where you can go after takeoff. Looking at the weather on the paper that they printed out an hour ago is not acceptable.
Air Carrier Captain reported company info pages are inadequate for MUHA. Also reported problems obtaining an adequate preflight weather briefing.