The airport lies in the municipality of Boyeros and connects Havana with the rest of the Caribbean, North, Central and South America, as well as Europe.

It was known as the Rancho Boyeros because in colonial times a local family had built a thatched hut and provided meals and an inn to the weary drovers that brought agricultural products to the capital from Batabanó and Vuelta Abajo.

The first transatlantic flight from any Latin American country to Europe took place in 1946 from Havana to Madrid on a Douglas DC-4, operated by Aerovias Cubanas Internacionales (Cunnair), founded by Cuban pioneer Reinaldo Ramirez Rosell.

Delta Air Lines connected Havana with New Orleans and Chicago and to the south with Montego Bay, Jamaica and Caracas.

It also flew from Havana to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Aerolíneas Argentinas connected Buenos Aires to Havana via Rio de Janeiro, Trinidad, and New York City, with DC-6s.

[citation needed] Additionally, there were already few services to Europe when Iberia vied with Cubana in the route to Madrid, with Super Constellations.

Cubana de Aviación in 1958 flew five daily Viscount 818s to Miami, and Bristol Britannia 318s to Madrid, Mexico City, and New York.

In the 1990s the special charter flights were approved by the US government, to operate from Miami for Cuban citizens living in the United States that have close relatives in Cuba.

[7] The London-Paris-Barbados-Havana Air France flight was received at the airport by Fidel Castro, who boarded the aircraft and greeted the crew and passengers.

On April 26 the following year, the new International Terminal 3 was inaugurated by Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Cuba's President Fidel Castro.

In 2007, three young recruits who deserted from the Cuban Army tried to hijack a commercial passenger aircraft aiming to defect to the United States.

Special charter service to the United States were allowed from the 1990s, but were required to be operated by travel companies licensed by the U.S. government, largely from Florida.

In March 2015, Sun Country Airlines started operating regularly scheduled charter flights from New York during the Cuban Thaw.

[10] Regularly scheduled commercial service to and from the United States began again in the fall of 2016, with such airlines as American, Delta, JetBlue and, after January 2017, Alaska, flying to Havana.

[11] However, several airlines had dropped, if not cut back, flights to Cuba by late 2017 due in part to President Trump's decision to reimpose stricter travel regulations, therefore partially ending the Cuban Thaw.

[12] In February 2016, a VIP room at the airport was used as the location for the historic meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill.

The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights at Havana Airport: This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency Media related to José Martí International Airport at Wikimedia Commons