Branson's Virgin Does Cuba

That master airline promoter, Virgin Atlantic's Richard Branson, is linking Havana and London's Gatwick airport with twice-weekly service beginning July 7.  Somewhere, in the corporate suites of US Airways/America West as well as American, executives are cursing the fact that Uncle Sam forbids them from serving Cuba. 

Can Americans hop over to London and catch a Virgin flight to Havana? 

Not legally.  US law still forbids US citizens from spending a dollar in Cuba, and the Bush administration has been more proactive in fining offenders than previous administrations. 

When Bill Clinton was president, I recall writing an article for MSNBC.com about the opening of Cuba to Americans.  Hopes were high that a normalization of relations was impending, but that was not to be.  I'm 55 years old and can only hope I live long enough to see the US open its doors to Cuba just as we have to former adveraries such as Vietnam and Libya.