CUBA: More Than 100 Killed In Air Crash At Jose Marti International Airport

More than 100 people have died after a Boeing 737 airliner crashed near Cuba's main airport in Havana, the country's worst air disaster in decades.

Three women were pulled alive from the wreckage, but are said to be in a critical condition.

A Cuban state airliner crashed and burned moments after takeoff from Havana on Friday, killing nearly all 114 people aboard the nearly 40-year-old plane.

It was one of the worst airline crashes in Cuba, which has been struggling to operate with a decrepit fleet of planes that it has blamed partly on the longstanding economic embargo imposed by the United States.

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 at least one person on a stretcher from the tangled remains.

The plane, which was nearly 40 years old, was carrying 104 passengers and six crew members.

Cuban authorities have launched an investigation, and two days of national mourning have been declared.

The Boeing 737-201 crashed at 12:08 (16:08 GMT) on Friday, shortly after taking off from Havana on an internal flight to Holguin on the east of the island.

State television said the flight had been headed to Holguin, on the eastern part of the island.

The plane, a Boeing 737 leased by Cubana de Aviacion, a state-run Cuban airline, first went into service in 1979, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, making it one of the older 737s still in commercial operation.

The plane crashed at 12:08 p.m. just after it had departed Jose Marti International Airport. The flight, DMJ 0972, carried 105 people, including at least five children.

The plane also carried nine crew members, the United Nations said. Five of them were Mexican, according to Mexican officials.

All six crew members on board were Mexican and the majority of the passengers were Cuban, with five foreigners reported to be among them.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said after visiting the crash site: There has been an unfortunate aviation accident. The news is not very promising, it seems that there is a high number of victims.

It's too early to say what caused the crash, but eyewitnesses on the ground describe seeing the jet burst into flames before crashing into a field close to a wooded area near Havana's main airport.

I saw it taking off all of a sudden, it made a turn, and went down. We were all amazed said an eye witness.

We heard an explosion and then saw a big cloud of smoke go up, a restaurant owner near the crash site explained.

Mexico's transport department said on its website that during take-off the plane apparently suffered a problem and dived to the ground.

Residents of a neighborhood near the airport said that after the plane took off, it suddenly veered in an unusual direction.

A manicurist, was hanging laundry on a clothesline in her front yard when the plane made its odd turn.

More worrisome, she said, it was low and descending, barely clearing the wooden telephone poles on her street.

As it roared overhead one of the engines was on fire. The plane then disappeared behind trees and crashed on the edge of a field, hundreds of yards from a house.

The tremor from the impact and explosion was so strong that it shook the ground and knocked decorative objects in the nearby homes.

Boeing said that it was ready to send a technical team to Cuba, as permitted under US law and at the direction of the US National Transportation Safety Board and Cuban authorities.

A US trade embargo has been in force against Cuba for many decades.

Four people survived the crash but one died after being transported to hospital, the director of Havana's Calixto Garcia hospital, Carlos Alberto Martinez said.

The three survivors are all women, according to Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma: one aged between 18 and 25, one in her thirties and the third aged 39.

She is alive but very burnt, one of the women's relatives at the hospital said.

Both the Argentine and Mexican governments have confirmed nationals from their countries were among the dead.

The plane had been leased to state airline Cubana de Aviacion by the Mexican company Aerolineas Damojh.

Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, traveled to the site of the crash to oversee recovery efforts along with Health Minister Roberto Morales.

Buses with relatives of the flight’s passengers headed to Havana to identify the victims.

The Mexican authorities said the plane was built in 1979 and had been successfully inspected last November. Mexico has said it was sending two civil aviation specialists to join the investigation.

Aerolineas Damojh, also known as Global Air, has three planes in operation.

Cuba's deadliest air crash was in 1989, when a Soviet-made Ilyushin-62M passenger plane crashed near Havana killing 126 people on board and another 24 people on the ground.

Cubana de Aviacion 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 takeoff, 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.

On Friday’s crash, there were conflicting reports over which company owned the plane leased to Cubana.

State media reports first said it belonged to Blue Panorama, an Italian company, but Damojh Airlines, a Mexican company also known as Global Air, later confirmed that it was the owner.

Damojh Airlines began operations in 1990 and has only three airplanes in its fleet, according to a statement from the Mexican Secretary of Transportation.

In 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.

It remained unclear what caused the crash, but it came against the backdrop of Cuba’s struggle to improve commercial aviation on the island, which has long faced economic constraints from the United States embargo.

A day before the crash, Cuban state newspapers reported that one of the country’s new vice presidents, Salvador Valdes Mesa, met with key officials from the island’s aviation sector to discuss challenges.

The report said that Roberto Pena Samper, the president of the Cuban Aviation Corporation, bemoaned that the embargo placed by successive American administrations prevents the island from acquiring the resources necessary to operate a larger fleet of planes and to enhance airport services.

Cubana suspended most domestic flights in March, several news outlets reported. Radio Marti, the United States government-funded website, posted a photo of a sign on the airline’s door showing that all the flights had been canceled.

A security guard told Radio Marti that there were literally no planes, and added that the ones that remain are in very bad condition.


Tourism Observer

USA: American Airlines Boeing 737 Engine Fails Inflight

American Airlines Boeing 737-800, performing flight from New York La Guardia to Orlando with 156 passengers and 6 crew, was climbing out of New York when the crew requested to maintain 12,000 feet while they were troubleshooting a problem.

The crew subsequently advised they had an engine failure and wanted to divert to New York’s JFK Airport.

The aircraft landed safely on JFK’s runway 22R about 20 minutes later.

The airline reported the engine had no visible damage, the crew had received an engine fault indication which subsequently was identified to have been caused by the engine oil filter.

A replacement Boeing 737-800 registration N894NN reached Orlando with a delay of about 2 hours.


Tourism Observer

Alaska Air To Buy Virgin America

Alaska Air has agreed to buy Virgin America for USD$2.6 billion in cash to its boost its operation on the US West Coast and compete more effectively with larger airlines.

At USD$57 a share, the deal represents a premium of about 86 percent from Virgin America’s stock price before reports in March that the company was considering a sale. Analysts described the price as steep but said the merger would strengthen Alaska Air.

“The perception is that they paid a very, very high price,” said Sterne Agee CRT analyst Adam Hackel.
However, he said Alaska Air could handle the cost because its strong balance sheet would allow it to raise capital at a low borrowing rate.

The merger would help Alaska Air compete against Delta and American, which have embarked on major expansions in Los Angeles, Hackel added.

The deal appears to end what Alaska Air chief executive Brad Tilden called a “hard-fought competition” to purchase the offshoot of billionaire Richard Branson’s London-based Virgin Group.

JetBlue Airways had also made an offer but said in a statement that the price reached a point where it decided to withdraw from the bidding.

The Alaska Air deal would create the fifth-largest US airline after a decade of mergers that have shrunk the industry to a handful of companies. The four largest control more than 80 percent of the US travel market.

Virgin America accounts for about 1.5 percent of US domestic flight capacity, while Alaska Air and its Horizon Air subsidiary account for 5 percent, Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Linenberg wrote in a recent research note.

Branson, whose holding company owned 24.9 percent of the airline as of March 25, expressed sadness that Virgin America was changing hands.

The US Department of Transportation stipulated he take some of his shares in Virgin America as non-voting stock, reducing his influence over any takeover, he said on a Virgin Group website.

“So there was sadly nothing I could do to stop” the Alaska Air deal, he said.
Alaska Air said it might keep using the Virgin America name in some form.

Because of the deal, Alaska Air plans to slow its share repurchase this year and probably next, chief financial officer Brandon Pedersen said.

Alaska Air said in a statement that the deal would generate USD$225 million in annual synergies once the companies are fully merged. It expects one-time integration costs of USD$300 million to USD$350 million.

The companies face major hurdles in combining, although Alaska Air expressed confidence in its ability to tackle them.

It must juggle the contracts of workers with disparate pay, benefits and seniority. Alaska Air said its unions and pilot leadership were on board with the merger.

The Seattle-based company would also have to train pilots and maintenance crews on a new aircraft type from Virgin America’s fleet of Airbus A320-family planes. Alaska Air currently flies Boeing 737s.

Alaska Air said it was buying California-based Virgin America to expand in Los Angeles and San Francisco and offer more connections to international airline partners. It would also benefit from Virgin America’s corporate contracts and cult-like status among customers who work for technology companies.

S&P Capital IQ analyst Jim Corridore said in a research note that the deal would increase Alaska Air’s access to transcontinental markets on the East Coast.

Alaska Air chief operating officer Ben Minicucci said he expected few antitrust concerns because the two companies have “minimal” overlap of routes.