Regularly scheduled flights between the United States and Cuba might begin in the coming months, after government officials in Havana said they and their counterparts from Washington are close to signing an agreement on the normalization of air travel between the two countries.

After initial delays, Cuba seems to have heeded requests by U.S. officials, who want the recent rapprochement and restoration of diplomatic relations to manifest in more concrete results, The Associated Press reported.

By the final months of 2015, the two nations may reach deals not just on fights, but also on environmental protection, direct postal service, and the fight against drug trafficking, Josefina Vidal, Cuba's head of North American affairs, told reporters at the Cuban Embassy in Washington.

"We are very close to the first agreements that we can announce in the next few weeks," she said. "I am almost certain that by the end of the year we can announce some results in those areas."

An unnamed State Department official told Reuters in September that among the most critical issues that had to be discussed with regard to air travel were aviation safety and security. The source added that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would have to approve of the operations on the Caribbean island.

So far, commercial air links between the United States and Cuba have been limited to charter flights, which have been available for years. But some U.S. travel providers say they have recently experienced difficulties with such operations, despite the improvement in relations between the countries, the Miami Herald reported.

Companies that need to transfer money to Cuban accounts to pay for items, including flights, hotels, guides and rental cars, complain that the needed wire transfers are frequently delayed, and that they are now subject to even more questions about passengers, flights and itineraries, the newspaper detailed.

"I keep telling myself [that the normalization of ties with Cuba] is really great; we've been working for it for a long time," said Bob Guild, the vice president of New Jersey-based Marazul Charters, which offers charters from Miami to a number of Cuban cities. "But what's going on with the banks is very contradictory, and it's a potential stumbling block in the process of normalization."