Is Cleveland Getting Direct Flights to Costa Rica This Year?

The head of San José's Juan Santamaría International Airport says we are

By Mark Oprea on Thu, Jan 25, 2024 at 7:24 am

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Jean François-Renaud / Flickr

The Plage de Manzanillo in Costa Rica. Flights non-stop from CLE to San Jose could be commencing later this year.

It's possible—probable?—that Clevelanders could be flying straight to San José, Costa Rica in 2024.

That is to say, the Central American country could be the next non-stop international destination out of Hopkins Airport.

The news was hinted at in a recent story on Costa Rica's record 2023 tourism numbers from the Tico Times, a Costa Rican English-language paper.

Juan Santamaría International Airport CEO Ricardo Hernández was quoted in the article on reasons why 2024 will be even better: "With new direct services from cities like Cleveland, St. Louis, Austin, and others commencing just this year," Hernández told the newspaper, "we foresee strong continuation in arrivals from our core North American markets."

Reached by email, a Cleveland Hopkins spokesperson said: "We have nothing to confirm at this time."

What would be CLE's debut direct flight to Central America would be another boon for an airport seemingly on the upswing. Early last year, after a momentous deal with the city, AerLingus began operating non-stop flights to Dublin, Cleveland's first bridge to Europe in about two decades.

And in November, Frontier, one of CLE's busiest operators, announced it would be flying straight to Montego Bay, Jamaica, beginning March 9. A brand new crew base, with 110 pilots, 250 attendants and 50 maintenance workers, will be nestling at Hopkins soon.

An airport official told Cleveland.com, following Frontier's announcement, that 400 passengers daily fly from Northeast Ohio to the Caribbean.

The possibility of Costa Rica could help to continue to reshape Cleveland's image as a global travel city, which was wounded after United disbanded its hub here in 2014.

Thirty-five non-stop flights —internationally to Toronto, Cancun, Punta Cana and Dublin—doesn't even bring Cleveland into a top 50 city count. Indianapolis' airport offers straight trips to 47 cities; Cincinnati's to 49; and Detroit's, a major hub for Delta, to 119.

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Mark Oprea

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Mark Oprea is a staff writer at Scene. For the past seven years, he's covered Cleveland as a freelance journalist, and has contributed to TIME, NPR, the Pacific Standard and the Cleveland Magazine. He's the winner of two Press Club awards.

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