Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

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Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

More than 100 people are feared dead after a plane crashed after taking off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.
The plane, which was carrying 104 passengers and nine crew, crashed in a farm field where firefighters sprayed the charred fuselage with hoses.
There was no immediate word on casualties.
The Boeing 737 was operated by state airline Cubana, according to Cuban state media.
Officials said the plane was headed to the eastern city of Holguin when it crashed a short distance from the end of the runway on the southern outskirts of Havana.
Source.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Sea Skimmer »

3 people found alive but badly hurt. Actually a leased Mexican airliner with Mexican crew flying an internal Cuban flight for the state airline. Plane was from 1979. Could be just about anything but somehow bad maintenance seems likely.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

You expect this more from Soviet-era planes that have been used long after their service lives have passed.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Zaune »

EnterpriseSovereign wrote: 2018-05-19 03:58pmYou expect this more from Soviet-era planes that have been used long after their service lives have passed.
The plane was nearly forty years old, and probably enough hours in the air for a round-trip to the Moon during a service life with one careful owner, shame about the other three. It might not have been past its airframe life yet but I bet it was pretty close.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Broomstick »

With that sort of airplane the crucial thing isn't so much age in years or hours/miles in the air but rather "cycles" - cycles of pressurizing/de-pressurizing that stress the hull. Many short-haul flights are more wear and tear than fewer long-haul flights of the same number of miles/hours in flight. 737's are often used for relatively short-haul flights (that's what made Southwest the airline it is). Who were the prior owners?

There are pressurized jets from the 1960's still in service and still reliable - but maintenance of them is a huge factor. As well as whether they've been used for short-haul or long-haul flights. The fact it's a Boeing (an American company) being flown in Cuba (which is trade embargoed by the US) makes me suspect that getting proper parts for maintenance and repairs may have been an issue.

But we don't know why this aircraft crashed yet. It might not have anything to do with maintenance.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Sea Skimmer »

Absurdly enough it turns out the reason this plane was being chartered was Cuba had to ground all its new An-148s because they are built so badly that several years of throwing spare parts at the problems has still left them less then reliable or airworthy. Kinda not surprising though since that plane really only existed economically due to Putin attempting to prop up Yanukovych in the Ukraine prior to his overthrow. And now Russia doesn't want to sell spare parts for them because they only compete long term with fully domestic Russian products. The Cubans have chartered foreign planes on and off for a long time to make up capacity, as long as they are foreign flagged and crewed (without involving US citizens) and major maintenance isn't done in Cuba it's not really a sanctions violation.

As for the plane history, it was owned by Piedmont Airlines until 1988, then US Air/US Airways until 2000 when it began bouncing around charter airlines, after 2004 most or all of which seem to be different contracts or branding by a company called Global Air that keeps 3-4 737s around at a time. It was flying for them went it crashed. This company flies old 737s until they are complete scrap from the looks of its fleet history, and it appears had a single mechanical onboard as part of how it kept the plane operating flying point to point in Cuba when the maintenance facility to they use is near Mexico city.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Zixinus »

So it looks like they ran the plane ragged and the inevitable happened?
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Broomstick »

Well.... let's just say that's in the top 5 of plausible reasons it crashed.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by SpottedKitty »

One black box recovered so far, no indication yet which one.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Sea Skimmer »

So allegations surface the airline had less then ideal maintenance and at times unqualified pilots.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44188469

Cuba plane crash: Damojh company 'had safety complaints'
20 May 2018

Media captionDoctor Jose Luis Castellano described the crash site as "very painful" to behold

The Mexican charter company whose plane crashed in Cuba on Friday, killing 110 people on board, had received prior safety complaints, two-ex pilots say.

One of the pilots described how a plane rented from Damojh airlines had dropped off radar completely some eight years ago. Another alleged poor maintenance.

Mexican authorities say they will carry out a safety audit of the company.

Three women survived the crash near Havana airport - Cuba's deadliest air disaster in more than 30 years.

Separately, it was revealed that 10 Protestant evangelical priests and their wives were among the crash victims.

Cuban authorities have launched an investigation into the crash, as rescuers continue to comb through the wreckage site some 20km (12 miles) south of the Cuban capital.

One of two "black boxes" that hold key flight data and information about what happened to the plane has been recovered and is said to be in good condition.
What were the safety complaints?

Allegations of previous safety complaints have emerged against the Mexican-based Damojh company, which leased both the Boeing 737 and its crew to Cuba's flagship state Cubana airline.

The head of Guyana's civil aviation body, Cpt Egbert Field, told the Associated Press news agency the same plane - which was nearly 40 years old - had been barred from using Guyanese airspace last year after authorities found its crew were overloading luggage on flights in Cuba.

In one instance, the news agency reports, Guyanese authorities had discovered suitcases stored in the plane's toilets.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption The plane crashed in a field near Havana international airport

Meanwhile, a retired pilot for Cubana wrote on Facebook that another plane rented by his airline from the same company had briefly dropped off radar for unspecified reasons while over the central Cuban city of Santa Clara in 2010 or 2011.

The captain and co-pilot of that flight were later suspended for "problems and serious lack of technical knowledge," said Ovidio Martinez Lopez, who worked for Cubana for more than 40 years.

He said "many flight attendants, flight attendants and flight safety personnel" had refused to fly on certain Cubana planes over the years.

Another pilot who used to work for Damojh told Mexican newspaper Milenio he had complained about a lack of adequate maintenance of planes.

"I experienced several incidents at this company, like engine failure or the electrical system went when we took off from Mexico on one occasion", Marco Aurelio Hernandez was quoted as saying.

The company has yet to comment on the allegations.
Who were the victims?

Cuba's transport minister said on Saturday that five children were among the victims. Adel Yzquierdo also updated the official death toll to 110, and listed the nationalities of the victims:

99 Cubans
Six Mexican crew members
One Mexican tourist
An Argentine couple
Two passengers from the Western Sahara (a disputed territory annexed by Morocco after Spain withdrew in 1975)

Also among the dead were 10 evangelical priests and their spouses who had been meeting in Havana for several days and were returning to their homes in Holguin province, where the flight was destined to land.

"On that plane were 10 couples of pastors. Twenty people. All of the Nazarene Church in the eastern region," confirmed Maite Quesada, a member of the Cuban Council of Churches.
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption Victims' relatives have been helping authorities in Havana to identify their loved ones

The Argentine couple have been named by their government as Dora Beatriz Cifuentes and Oscar Hugo Almaras, both in their 60s.

Several victims' relatives have travelled to Havana to help identify the deceased.

Meanwhile, the three survivors remain in critical condition with serious burns.

"My daughter is a fighter, she's strong, she'll save herself," the mother of a 23-year-old survivor, Amparo Font, told Reuters news agency.
Lets be honest, Cuba isn't going to charter the best and brightest on a more or less emergency basis, given the An-148 flop, simply because they don't have the money to do so. Internal flights don't earn Cuba foreign exchange the way international air routes can from tourists.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Patroklos »

They may want to rethink that calculus though, because tourists looking into Cuba may not make that determination, and given the condition of the rest of the Cuban transport system I bet a lot will be using these internal flights to see the sites.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Broomstick »

It's not just a matter of money - the US embargo on trade with Cuba makes getting Boeing parts more difficult. There are a crap-ton of old Boeings around (because the company has been around over a century, which is pretty much forever in aviation) and you can pick them up cheap, but they might be better off going for Airbus because getting proper parts might be easier for them.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Sea Skimmer »

So under a different lease to a Honduras based airline this plane was mismanaged and overloaded enough to get its self banned from Guyana.

https://apnews.com/ceae73b730d0446080cef4db4c534646

Company in Cuba plane crash had received safety complaints
By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN and BERT WILKINSON
Yesterday

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’ performance over the last decade, according to authorities in Guyana and a retired pilot for Cuba’s national airline.

Mexico’s government said late Saturday that its National Civil Aviation Authority will carry out an operational audit of Damojh airlines to see if its “current operating conditions continue meeting regulations” and to help collect information for the investigation into Friday’s crash in Cuba that left 110 dead.

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.

The plane and crew were being rented from Mexico City-based Damojh by EasySky, a Honduras-based low-cost airline. Cuba’s national carrier, Cubana de Aviacion, was also renting the plane and crew in a similar arrangement known as a “wet lease” 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.

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.

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’s 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.

Yzquierdo said it was routine for Cuba to rent planes under a variety of arrangements because of what he described as the country’s 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.

“It’s normal for us to rent planes,” he said. “Why? Because it’s convenient and because of the problem of the blockade that we have. Sometimes we can’t buy the planes that we need, and we need to rent them.”

He said that with Damojh, “the formula here is that they take care of the maintenance of the aircraft. That’s their responsibility.”

He said Cuba didn’t 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.

Yzquierdo also said the jet’s “black box” voice recorder had been recovered and that Cuban officials had granted a U.S. request for investigators from Boeing to travel to the island.

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.

“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.

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 “mules” 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.

After Easy Sky canceled a series of flights in spring 2017, leaving hundreds of Cubans stranded at Guyana’s 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’s toilet.

“This is the same plane and tail number,” 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’s crash. Damojh operates three Boeing 737s, two 737-300s and the 737-201 that crashed Friday, according to Mexican officials.

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 “serious technical knowledge issues,” and Cuba’s Aviation Security authority issued a formal recommendation that Cubana stop renting planes and crews from Damojh, Martinez wrote.

“They are many flight attendants and security personnel who refused to fly with this airline,” Martinez wrote. “On this occasion, the recommendation was overlooked and they rented from them again.”

Contacted by AP in Havana, Martinez confirmed his Facebook account but declined to comment further.

Mexican officials said the Boeing 737-201 was built in 1979.

Mexican aviation authorities said a team of experts would fly to Cuba on Saturday to take part in the investigation.

___

Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Lonestar »

Patroklos wrote: 2018-05-21 02:06am They may want to rethink that calculus though, because tourists looking into Cuba may not make that determination, and given the condition of the rest of the Cuban transport system I bet a lot will be using these internal flights to see the sites.
Tourist companies that manage American tourists in the country always use 10hr bus drives over internal flights.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Esquire »

Source? That seems like it would be a little hard to sell, given that anybody travelling to Cuba in the first place is probably at least moderately well-off.
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by AniThyng »

Esquire wrote: 2018-05-29 11:16pm Source? That seems like it would be a little hard to sell, given that anybody travelling to Cuba in the first place is probably at least moderately well-off.
Sounds like the point is the bus is actually safer than a rickety plane even if you could afford the plane...
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Re: Boeing 737 carrying 104 passengers crashes in Cuba after take-off from Havana's Jose Marti International Airport.

Post by Esquire »

AniThyng wrote: 2018-05-29 11:48pm
Esquire wrote: 2018-05-29 11:16pm Source? That seems like it would be a little hard to sell, given that anybody travelling to Cuba in the first place is probably at least moderately well-off.
Sounds like the point is the bus is actually safer than a rickety plane even if you could afford the plane...
...

Right, yes, of course. I did not in any way miss the obvious implication. How dare you suggest such a thing. 😕
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