Cubana de Aviacion flight CU972, departing Havana at 11 a.m., was en route to the Cuban city of Holguin and had 114 passengers and crew on board. The plane went down a short distance from the end of the runway at Jose Marti International Airport, soon after its take off.
Almost all of which were Cuban, bar five of the passengers and the foreign crew. There were initially three seriously injured female survivors, Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel said, although one later died in hospital. The total number of deaths is 111.
The Cuban State TV said the jet veered sharply to the right after takeoff, and a special commission had been formed to investigate the cause of the crash. “The only thing we heard, when we were checking in, an explosion, the lights went out in the airport and we looked out and saw black smoke rising and they told us a plane had crashed,” Argentine tourist Brian Horanbuena told The Associated Press at the airport. Gilberto Menendez, a person who runs a restaurant near the crash site said “we heard an explosion and then saw a big cloud of smoke go up.”
The 39 year old aircraft was a Global Aerolineas Damojh Boeing 737-200 being used on behalf of Cubana de Aviacion and had registration XA-UHZ.
Sources: AP, Aviation Herald, The Telegraph, New York Times, TeleSur
