Havana becomes the 100th city on Southwest's route map

Southwest Airlines is now flying to 100 destinations, the carrier's route map hitting the century mark on Monday as it launched its first flights to Havana, Cuba.

The carrier is flying to the Cuban capital non-stop from the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Tampa. The flights – two daily round-trip flights from Fort Lauderdale and one from Tampa – are part of the 20 total daily flights U.S. airlines are now allowed to fly to Havana.

Six other carriers – American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Spirit and United – have already launched their allotted flights to Havana. Additional flights have been approved to smaller Cuban cities.

That Havana would be the city to push Southwest to 100 destinations would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. It was just in July 2014 that Southwest made its first international flight with its own planes, flying outside the United States for the first time since it started operations in 1971.

Now, Southwest is flying to nine countries, including the USA. The airline's first Cuba flights began in November with service to the beach resort city of Varadero.

U.S. airlines now flying to Havana for first time in five decades

“I’m grateful to our more than 53,000 Southwest employees and everyone who’s been part of our Southwest family during the past 45 years who built our airline to this moment in history -- we now operate flights from 100 cities across nine countries,” Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said in Monday at the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana.

And it will be another Cuban destination – Santa Clara – that will push Southwest’s destination count to 101 when that service launches on Thursday (Dec. 15).

"By the end of this year, we'll offer six daily roundtrips between two Florida gateways and three Cuban cities as the work continues to open a new, five-gate international concourse here in Fort Lauderdale next summer," Steve Goldberg, Southwest's vice president of ground operations, says in a statement to the Sun-Sentinel of South Florida.

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