Cubana de Aviacion pulled the first Il-96-300 out of storage at the end of 2023. This is the largest aircraft in the Cuban national air carrier’s fleet, and the airline is the only commercial operator of this aircraft type.
The plane registered CU-T1250 spent several months in Russia, where engineers maintained it. The aircraft allows Cubana to fly long-haul routes from Cuba to Madrid and Buenos Aires. However, according to Flightradar24, as of March 2024, the plane still does not fly.
avianews.com was in this plane in 2005, just weeks before its official delivery to Cubana. As the airline has financial problems, the plane will unlikely have a new cabin. So, what is inside Cubana’s Il-96-300?
Business class
The business class in the Cubana Il-96-300 is old-fashioned. It takes you back to the 1990s when airlines offered only reclined seats but not lie-flat seats.
The cabin seat layout is 2+2+2 with an obsolete in-flight entertainment system (IFE). The screens are shared and are located on top of the cabin, and passengers can see only the same movie.
Each seat has an individual audio port for headphones. It allows passengers to hear the movie sound or switch to music channels.
Economy class
Il-96-300 has Soviet-style seats in the economy class. It returns you not to the 1990s but to the 1980s. The only sign of modernity is the shared IFE, which is the same as in the business class.
The economy class seat layout is 3+3+3. The more modern Boeing 787 has the same layout.
Cubana has acquired several new Russian-made Il-96-300, Tu-204, and Ukrainian-made An-158 planes during the last twenty years, but it has had problems with maintenance. As a result, all planes have been grounded.
