Cuban Flight Crashes; All aboard are Lost
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Contact photographer Teemu Tuuri
What: Aerocaribbean ATR-72-500 en route from Santiago to Havana
Where: Guasimal, Sancti Spiritus Cuba
When: Nov 4 2010
Who: with 61 passengers and 7 crew
Why: The last flight to leave Santiago before the airport closed due to tropical storm Tomas disappeared from radio contact at 5:42 pm while over Guasimal not far from the Zaza Reservoir. The crew made an emergency call at 5:42. 40 cubans were aboard and 28 non-cubans (9 Argentinian, 7 Mexican, 3 Dutch, 1 French, 2 German, 2 Austrian, 1 Italian, 1 Spanish, 1 Venezuelan, and 1 Japanese).
A hospital worker said “The plane made several abrupt movements before crashing to the ground.” Rescuers hiked in through thick vegetation (using bulldozers to get through the vegetation to find the plane shattered and in flames and no survivors.
Tropical storm Tomas developed into a hurricane. Cuba declared a state of alert.
The ongoing investigation has not ruled that weather is the definitive factor because the storm had not reached Cuba at the time of the crash.
Cuban state airline Cubana de Aviacion owns Aerocaribbean. The flight normally flies twice a week from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Santiago de Cuba to Havana