Scores die as Cuban airliner crashes
A Cuban airliner carrying more than 100 people crashed shortly after takeoff from Havana on Friday, killing all but three people aboard, Cuba’s official media reported.
As emergency responders rushed to the scene, footage from the crash site showed plumes of thick black smoke rising. The crushed fuselage, seemingly ripped in pieces, lay in thick vegetation as firefighters doused it with hoses. A crowd rushed in and pulled away at least one person on a stretcher from the tangled remains of the plane.
The airliner was described on state television as a Boeing 737 leased by Cubana de Aviación, a staterun Cuban airline. State television said the flight had been headed to Holguín, on the eastern part of the island, and that “ambulances and firefighters are on the tarmac.”
The plane crashed at 12:08 p.m. just after it had departed Jose Martí International Airport, Cuba’s state newspaper, Granma, reported on its website. It said the flight, DMJ 0972, carried 105 people, including at least five children.
Their nationalities were not immediately clear. Granma’s account initially said all aboard were foreigners but later deleted that passage without explanation.
One male passenger was pronounced dead after being taken to Calixto García hospital in Havana. Three female survivors were receiving treatment at the hospital, according to Granma.
Cuba’s new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, traveled to the site of the crash to oversee recovery efforts along with Health Minister Roberto Morales.
“The news is not very hopeful,” Díaz-Canel told Cuban state television.
Cubana has struggled to overcome a reputation for poor safety after a string of crashes left dozens of people dead in the late 1990s.
In 1997, a Cubana flight crashed off the island’s southeast coast three minutes after take off, killing about 40 people.
A year later, around 80 people were killed when a Cubana plane crashed into a field after taking off from the airport in Quito, Ecuador. In December 1999, dozens of people, many of them Guatemalan medical students, died when a Cubana flight skidded off the runway in Guatemala City. A week after that, another Cubana flight crashed into a mountain in Venezuela, killing all 22 people aboard.
There was confusion over which airline had leased the plane that crashed Friday to Cubana. Initial state media reports said it belonged to Blue Panorama, an Italian company. But Blue Panorama said its plane was not involved. When reached by phone, an employee at Damojh Airlines, a Mexican company also known as Global Air, confirmed the plane belonged to the company.
Damojh Airlines began operations in 1990, and counts three airplanes among its fleet, according to a statement from the Mexican secretary of transportation.
The statement said that as recently as November the aircraft had been inspected as part of an annual program, and that its planes had passed a safety test administered by the government agency. In addition, the airline was up to date on its permits and was authorized to lease the planes domestically and abroad, including to Cubana.
The crash came against the backdrop of Cuba’s struggle to improve commercial aviation on the island nation, which has long faced economic constraints from the United States embargo.
A day before the crash, Cuban state newspapers reported on a meeting Cuba’s new vice president, Salvador Valdés Mesa, held with key officials from the island’s aviation sector to discuss challenges.