<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
HAVANA (AP) – The Mexican charter company whose 39-year-old plane crashed in Havana had been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews\u2019 performance over the last decade, according to authorities in Guyana and a retired pilot for Cuba\u2019s national airline.<\/p>\n
Mexico\u2019s government said late Saturday that its National Civil Aviation Authority will carry out an operational audit of Damojh airlines to see if its \u201ccurrent operating conditions continue meeting regulations\u201d and to help collect information for the investigation into Friday\u2019s crash in Cuba that left 110 dead.<\/p>\n
The plane that crashed, a Boeing 737, 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 told The Associated Press on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The plane and crew were being rented from Mexico City-based Damojh by EasySky, a Honduras-based low-cost airline. Cuba\u2019s national carrier, Cubana de Aviacion, was also renting the plane and crew in a similar arrangement known as a \u201cwet lease\u201d before the aircraft veered on takeoff to the eastern Cuban city of Holguin and crashed into a field just after noon Friday, according to Mexican aviation authorities.<\/p>\n
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. They announced a new audit late Saturday.<\/p>\n
Cuban Transportation Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez told reporters Saturday afternoon that Cubana had been renting the plane for less than a month under an arrangement in which the Mexican company was entirely responsible for maintenance of the aircraft. Armando Daniel Lopez, president of Cuba\u2019s Institute of Civil Aviation, told the AP that Cuban authorities had not received any complaints about the plane in that month. He declined to comment further.<\/p>\n
Yzquierdo said it was routine for Cuba to rent planes under a variety of arrangements because of what he described as the country\u2019s inability to purchase its own aircraft due to the U.S. trade embargo on the island. Cuba has been able to buy planes produced in other countries, including France and Ukraine, but has pulled many from service due to maintenance problems and other issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s normal for us to rent planes,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy? Because it\u2019s convenient and because of the problem of the blockade that we have. Sometimes we can\u2019t buy the planes that we need, and we need to rent them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that with Damojh, \u201cthe formula here is that they take care of the maintenance of the aircraft. That\u2019s their responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Cuba didn\u2019t have pilots certified to fly the Boeing, so it had hired the Mexican crew with the expectation that they were fully trained and certified by the proper authorities.<\/p>\n
Yzquierdo also said the jet\u2019s \u201cblack box\u201d voice recorder had been recovered and that Cuban officials had granted a U.S. request for investigators from Boeing to travel to the island.<\/p>\n
Eyewitness and private salon owner Rocio Martinez said she heard a strange noise and looked up to see the plane with a turbine on fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt had an engine on fire, in flames, it was falling toward the ground,\u201d Martinez said, adding that the plane veered into the field where it crashed, avoiding potential fatalities in a nearby residential area.<\/p>\n
Field told AP that 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 \u201cmules\u201d to bring suitcases crammed with goods back home to the island, where virtually all consumer products are scarce and more expensive than in most other countries.<\/p>\n
After Easy Sky canceled a series of flights in spring 2017, leaving hundreds of Cubans stranded at Guyana\u2019s main airport, 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\u2019s toilet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the same plane and tail number,\u201d Guyanese Infrastructure Minister David Patterson said. He and other Guyanese authorities said they did not immediately know if the crew suspended last May was the same one that died in Friday\u2019s crash. Damojh operates three Boeing 737s, two 737-300s and the 737-201 that crashed Friday, according to Mexican officials.<\/p>\n
Ovidio Martinez Lopez, a pilot for Cubana for over 40 years until he retired six years ago, wrote in a post 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 \u201cserious technical knowledge issues,\u201d and Cuba\u2019s Aviation Security authority issued a formal recommendation that Cubana stop renting planes and crews from Damojh, Martinez wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are many flight attendants and security personnel who refused to fly with this airline,\u201d Martinez wrote. \u201cOn this occasion, the recommendation was overlooked and they rented from them again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Contacted by AP in Havana, Martinez confirmed his Facebook account but declined to comment further.<\/p>\n
Mexican officials said the Boeing 737-201 was built in 1979.<\/p>\n
Mexican aviation authorities said a team of experts would fly to Cuba on Saturday to take part in the investigation.<\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Mexican charter company whose 39-year-old plane crashed in Havana had been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews’ performance over the last decade, according to authorities in Guya HAVANA (AP) – The Mexican charter company whose 39-year-old plane crashed in Havana had been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[574,30,575,576],"class_list":["post-3117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worlds","tag-cuba","tag-disaster-accident","tag-havana","tag-mexico-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}