The presence of a US drone deters the Cuban Ilyushin from landing in Venezuela

Havana/The Ilyushin Il-96-300 with registration CU-T1250, Cubana de Aviación’s only long-haul four-engine aircraft, returned to the Island this Thursday after a frustrated landing attempt in Caracas. Just like analysts warned Based on the movements recorded on flight location pages, the aircraft flew in circles for several minutes in the morning hours off the coast of Venezuela, probably waiting for permission to land, and then turned around, but towards the east of the Island. It had left Havana, although the airport was not included in the satellite tracking, something common with this plane.

According to the Venezuelan media The Patillaan MQ-4C Triton reconnaissance drone had been flying over the same area where the Cuban plane decided to change course. The “non-gunned stealth drone”, indicates the media, took off from the Jacksonville Naval Air Station, in Florida, and for hours has maintained its visit in the Caribbean Sea.

Last Monday, the same IL-96-300 took off from Havanaalso bound for Caracas, and did not appear on the satellite websites. For them, it is often a “ghost plane”, since it travels with the radar off.

A knowledgeable source revealed to 14ymedio that that flight was “full of soldiers” and assumed that “they are going to stay there.” The same person said that the flight was headed to pick up the bodies of the agents who died on the Island during the US operation that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, but this did not materialize. As observed in Flightradar24the Cubana four-engine also made a trip to Venezuela yesterday, without the reason being known.

Normally used to transport senior officials of the regime, military personnel and relevant material, it may be destined for the repatriation of Cuban doctors distributed throughout Venezuelan territory. This same Thursday, the Ministry of Health reported that “after a period of logistical interruption, the flow of return to Cuba of health professionals who provide services in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been normalized.”

The note, published in the official press, aims to “sell” the information as the simple beginning of a well-deserved vacation. Thus, it is said that in the last months of 2025, trips were affected “by difficulties in air transportation, a situation that later became more complex with the closure of Venezuelan airspace and the consequent suspension of all commercial flights”, and that because of this, there was a “temporary accumulation of collaborators who had concluded their work commitment or who had their rest period” and who had not been able to return to Cuba.

This week, the text continues, “in an organized and progressive manner, the flights that allow the return of these workers to their country have been resumed,” since “with the reestablishment of international air operations to and from Venezuela, the mechanisms to resolve the accumulated delay were immediately activated.”

Apart from the fact that not all airlines have restored their flights with Venezuela, the note says nothing about the main change that the Caribbean country has undergone in recent days, in which the US Government, after capturing Maduro, has forced the establishment of a “transitional government” with Delcy Rodríguez at the helm.

The new situation puts at serious risk not only the energy survival of the Island, which depends on the crude oil that Caracas has donated to it for more than a quarter of a century, but also that of the regime itself, embedded in the Chavista Government to its foundations, as demonstrated by the identities of the Cubans who died in the US operation and despite the decades of denial by both parties of the presence of Cuban troops in Venezuela. Belonging to Maduro’s protection circle, most of them were senior officials of Cuban Intelligence.