The Mexican charter company which owned the plane that crashed in Havana on Friday, killing 110 people, has been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews’ performance over the last decade, according to authorities in Guyana and a retired pilot for Cuba’s national airline.
The plane that crashed was barred from Guyanese airspace last year after authorities discovered that its crew had been allowing dangerous overloading of luggage on flights to Cuba, Guyanese civil aviation director Capt Egbert Field said.
Ovidio Martinez Lopez, a pilot for Cubana for more than 40 years until he retired six years ago, wrote on Facebook that a plane rented from the Mexican company by Cubana briefly dropped off radar while over the city of Santa Clara in 2010 or 2011, triggering an immediate response by Cuban aviation security officials.
As a result, Cuban officials suspended a captain and co-pilot for “serious technical knowledge issues” and the aviation security authority issued a formal recommendation that Cubana stop renting planes and crews from the Mexican company, Martinez wrote.
Cuba’s transportation minister, Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez, said on Saturday five children had died in the crash. He also announced that a flight recorder from the plane had been located.
The only three survivors of Cuba’s worst aviation disaster in three decades were clinging to life. Carlos Alberto Martinez, director of Havana’s Calixto Garcia Hospital, said the three were in extremely grave condition. Cuban officials identified the women as Maylen Diaz, 19, of Holguin; Grettel Landrovell, 23, of Havana; and Emiley Sanchez, 39, of Holguin. Martinez said Sanchez was conscious and communicating, Diaz was conscious and sedated and Ladrovell was in a coma.
Landrovell’s mother, Amparo Font, told reporters her daughter is a flamenco dancer and engineering student on the verge of graduation. “My daughter is an angel,” she said. “They have to save her.”
Relatives of the dead gathered at a morgue in the capital, weeping and embracing each other, as investigators tried to piece together why the aging Boeing 737 went down and erupted in flames shortly after take-off early on Friday afternoon.
Yzquierdo said those on board included 102 Cubans, three tourists, two foreign residents and six crew members, who were from Mexico. Argentina’s foreign ministry said two of its citizens had died.
Maite Quesada, a member of the Cuban Council of Churches, announced that 20 pastors from an evangelical church were killed. They had spent several days at a meeting in the capital and were returning to the province of Holguin.
Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel said a special commission had been formed to find the cause of the crash. Mexican aviation authorities said a team of experts would fly to Cuba on Saturday to take part in the investigation.
State airline Cubana, which operated the flight, has had a generally good safety record but is notorious for delays and cancellations and has taken many of its planes out of service because of maintenance problems, prompting it to hire charter aircraft from other companies.
Mexican officials said the Boeing 737-201 that crashed was built in 1979 and rented by Cubana from Aerolineas Damojh, a small charter company that also goes by the name Global Air. Aviation authorities in Guyana last year stopped the same aircraft from conducting charter flights because of serious safety concerns, including the fears about excessive baggage and other issues.
A Damojh employee in Mexico City declined to comment, saying the company would be communicating only through written statements. Mexican authorities said Damojh had permits needed to lease its aircraft and had passed a November 2017 verification of its maintenance program.
In Guyana, Capt Field said the Boeing 737 with tail number XA-UHZ had been flying four routes a week between Georgetown, Guyana and Havana starting in October 2016. Cubans do not need visas to travel to Guyana and the route was popular with Cubans working as “mules” to bring suitcases crammed with goods back to the island, where virtually all consumer products are scarce.
After the cancelation of a series of flights in spring 2017, leaving hundreds of Cubans stranded, authorities began inspecting the plane and discovered that crews were loading excessive amounts of baggage, leading to concerns the aircraft could be dangerously overburdened and unbalanced. In one instance, Guyanese authorities discovered suitcases stored in the plane’s toilet.
“This is the same plane and tail number,” Guyanese infrastructure minister David Patterson said. He and other Guyanese officials said they did not immediately know if the crew suspended last May was the one that died on Friday. Damojh operates three Boeing 737s, two 737-300s and the 737-201 that crashed, according to Mexican officials.
In his Facebook post, Martinez, the retired Cubana pilot, wrote: “They are many flight attendants and security personnel who refused to fly with this airline.” Contacted in Havana, he confirmed his account but declined to comment further.
An eyewitness to the crash, Rocio Martinez, said she heard a strange noise and looked up to see the plane with a turbine on fire.
“It had an engine on fire, in flames, it was falling toward the ground,” Martinez said, adding that the plane veered into the field where it crashed, avoiding potential fatalities in a nearby residential area.
