MIAMI, United States. – Although the worst plane crash to occur on the Island to date took place on September 3, 1989, when an Ilyushin 62 plane bound for Milan, Italy, crashed in Havana shortly after takeoff, causing the death of its 115 occupants and 40 people on the ground, the incident that Cubans remember the most is the one that occurred just four years ago, on May 18, 2018.
That day, flight 972 of Cubana de Aviación (leased to the Mexican company Global Air) crashed in the vicinity of Santiago de Las Vegas, a few minutes after taking off. Of the 113 occupants of the aircraft, which covered the Havana-Holguín route, only one person survived: the young Mailen Diaz Almaguer.
In 2019, the Institute of Civil Aeronautics of Cuba (IACC) attributed the accident to “a chain of errors, with a preponderance of the human factor”.
The IACC also identified inconsistencies in crew training, errors in weight and balance calculations, and low operational standards revealed in the flight as contributing factors.
Despite the fact that the airline (Global Air) and its maintenance organization presented problems and failures “in good practices to carry out maintenance”, the investigating commission ruled out that the incident was directly related to the technical condition of the aircraft.
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After the accident
To date, several lawsuits have been filed in Mexico, Spain and the US against the insurance company Ve por Más SA, the Grupo Financiero Ve por Más and the owner of Aerolíneas Damojh (Global Air), Manuel Rodríguez Campos. All continue their course in international law firms with no solution in sight.
In 2020, the mother of one of the deceased told Cuban Journal that, in July 2019, the affected families were summoned by the lawyer from the International Law Firm Alejandro Vigil Iduate, who told them that he was acting as a mediator between them and the Cuban State.
The official gave them a magnetic card with 5,000 CUC for the legalization of the notarial documents necessary for the procedures.
However, the victim’s parents had to make it clear that they had not filed any claim for the accident.
Four years after the second worst accident in Cuban civil aviation, the tragedy at the Saratoga hotel, where 46 people died, has once again drawn attention to the issue of compensation for the survivors and the families of the victims.
Did the Cuban regime duly compensate the families of the victims of flight 972 Havana-Holguín? Will it compensate the survivors of the Saratoga hotel explosion?
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