Airliner with 110 aboard crashes in Cuba, 3 said to survive

A 39-year-old airliner with 110 people aboard crashed and burned in a cassava field just after taking off from the Havana airport Friday, leaving three survivors in Cuba's worst aviation disaster in three decades, officials said.

Rescue teams search through the wreckage site of a Boeing 737 that plummeted into a cassava field with more than 100 passengers on board, in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

The Boeing 737 went down just after noon a short distance from the end of the runway at Jose Marti International Airport while on a short-hop flight to the eastern city of Holguin. Firefighters rushed to extinguish the flames that engulfed the field of debris left where Cubana Flight 972 hit the ground.

Relatives of passengers a Boeing 737 that plummeted into a yuca field with more than 100 passengers on board wait for news near airport terminal in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

"There is a high number of people who appear to have died," Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said from the scene. "Things have been organized, the fire has been put out, and the remains are being identified."

The 39-year-old airliner with 110 people aboard crashed and burned in a cassava field just after takeoff from the Havana airport, leaving three survivors in Cuba's worst aviation disaster in three decades, officials say. (Marcelino Vazquez Hernandez/ACN via AP)

Relatives of those aboard were ushered into a private area at the terminal to await word on their loved ones.

"My daughter is 24, my God, she's only 24!" cried Beatriz Pantoja, whose daughter Leticia was on the plane.

People look from far at the remains of a Boeing 737 that plummeted into a yuca field with more than 100 passengers on board, in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

State TV said the jet veered sharply to the right after takeoff, and Diaz-Canel said 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.

A plane flies after takeoff over the area where a Boeing 737 plummeted into a yuca field with more than 100 passengers on board in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

Skies were overcast and rainy at the airport at the time of the incident, with winds reportedly around 4 mph (6 kph).

Authorities said there were 104 passengers and six crew members on the flight operated by the Cuban state airline. Mexican authorities said the Boeing 737-201 was built in 1979 and rented by Cubana from Aerolineas Damojh, a small charter company that also goes by the name Global Air.

Relatives of passengers a Boeing 737 that plummeted into a yuca field with more than 100 passengers on board wait for news near airport terminal in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

A statement from the country's Transportation Department identified the pilot and co-pilot as Capt. Jorge Luis Nunez Santos and first officer Miguel Angel Arreola Ramirez. It said the flight attendants were Maria Daniela Rios, Abigail Hernandez Garcia and Beatriz Limon. Global Air said maintenance worker Marco Antonio Lopez Perez was also aboard.

Relatives of passengers a Boeing 737 that plummeted into a yuca field with more than 100 passengers on board, arrive near the airport terminal in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

Outside the company's Mexico City offices, former Global Air flight attendant Ana Marlen Covarrubias said she had worked for the company for over seven years and knows nearly all the crew members.

Firefighters carry a body bag that contains human remains recovered at the site where a Boeing 737 plummeted into a yuca field with more than 100 passengers on board, in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)

"I don't have the words. I'm very sad. We're in mourning," a she said in tears. "It was something really, really, really terrible; a tragedy for us."

In addition to the Mexican crew, Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma reported that the passengers were mostly Cubans plus five foreigners from countries it did not identify. Argentina's Foreign Ministry said two of its citizens had died in the crash.

The few surviving passengers of an airliner that crashed arrive at the Calixto Garcia General Hospital in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (Marcelino Vazquez Hernandez/ACN via AP)

In November 2010 a Global Air flight originating in Mexico City made an emergency landing in Puerto Vallarta because its front landing gear did not deploy. The fire was quickly extinguished, and none of the 104 people aboard were injured. That plane was a 737 first put into service in 1975.

The few surviving passengers of an airliner that crashed arrive at the Calixto Garcia General Hospital in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018.(Marcelino Vazquez Hernandez/ACN via AP)

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

Cubana has had a generally good safety record but is notorious for delays and cancellations and has taken many of its planes out of service because of maintenance problems in recent months, prompting it to hire charter aircraft from other companies.

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel, third from left, walks away from the site where a Boeing 737 plummeted into a yuca field with more than 100 passengers on board, in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Enrique de la Osa)

Four crash survivors were taken to a Havana hospital, and three remained alive as of mid-afternoon, hospital director Martinez Blanco told Cuban state TV.

State media reports stopped short of openly declaring the rest on board were dead, but there was no word of other survivors by Friday evening.

Cuban First Vice President Salvador Valdes Mesa had met with Cubana officials on Thursday to discuss improvements to its service. The airline blames its spotty record on a lack of parts and airplanes because of the U.S. trade embargo against the communist-run country.

It was Cuba's third major aviation accident since 2010.

Last year a Cuban military plane crashed into a hillside in the western province of Artemisa, killing eight soldiers. In 2010, an AeroCaribbean flight from Santiago to Havana went down in bad weather, killing all 68 people aboard, including 28 foreigners, in what was the country's worst air disaster in more than two decades.

The last deadly accident involving a Cubana-operated plane was in 1989, when a charter flight from Havana to Milan, Italy, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 126 people on board and at least two dozen on the ground.

Cubana's director general, Capt. Hermes Hernandez Dumas, told state media last month that the airline's domestic flights had carried 11,700 more passengers than planned between January and April.

He said 64 percent of flights took off on time, up from 59 percent the previous year.

HAVANA (AP) — His novels recount gruesome murders, thefts, scams, bribes and humiliating secrets. But those are not even the most important themes in the stories told by award-winning Cuban writer Leonardo Padura.

For the last four decades, Padura, 68, has managed to turn his series of detective thrillers into a social and political chronicle of Cuba, especially Havana, where he has lived all his life.

The island he depicts in his books — which have been translated to dozens of languages — is a mix of economic deprivation, Afro-descendant syncretism, corruption, mischief, uplifting music and growing inequality — all seasoned by a revolution that marked the 20th century.

“I write about the problems of individuals in Cuban society. And often, in my books, more than dramatic conflicts between the characters, you will find a social conflict between the characters and their historical time,” Padura told The Associated Press in a recent interview at his home in Mantilla, the populous Havana neighborhood where he was born, raised and married.

The scent of freshly brewed coffee is in the air, as well as the chirping sound of the birds that inhabit the patio where his dogs are buried. In a nearby studio, his wife, screenwriter Lucía López Coll, works on a computer.

It's also in this house where Mario Conde, the principal character of Padura’s work, was born. The downtrodden, nostalgic, chain-smoking detective has accompanied Padura since 1991, when “Past Perfect” — the first of the “Havana Quartet” series featuring Conde as the main protagonist — was published.

Keeping track of Detective Conde is almost like taking the pulse of Cuba in the last few years.

His last appearance was in the 2020 novel “Personas Decentes” ("Decent People") in which, now over 60 years old, Conde gets involved in the investigation of a homicide — and corruption case — against the backdrop of the 2016 historic visit of former U.S. President Barack Obama and the Rolling Stones to the island.

“This character comes from a neighborhood similar to mine,” Padura says of Conde. “He is a man of my generation. ... His view of reality has evolved because I have evolved, and his feeling of disenchantment has a lot to do with the way we have been living all these years.”

Reflecting on Cuba’s situation after the tightening of U.S. sanctions during the administration of President Donald Trump and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Padura says the island has barely crawled out of the crisis and has not yet been able to get back on its feet.

He points at the lack of food and medications, rising prices and deteriorating health and education systems, while Cubans grapple with fuel shortages and constant blackouts.

“There is a historical fatigue," he says. "People are tired, they have no alternatives and they look for one by emigrating.”

The soft-spoken chronicler highlights yet another impact of Cuba's ongoing economic crisis: A wave of popular protests and demonstrations that had not been seen in decades.

“The main cry was for food and electricity,” Padura recalls about the protests in 2021 and, more recently, in March. “But people also screamed ‘Freedom!' The lack of food and electricity might have been solved by fixing some thermoelectric plants and with a little rice and sugar ... but the other thing has not been talked about — and I think it's something that should be discussed in depth.”

Born in 1955, Leonardo de la Caridad Padura Fuentes studied literature at the University of Havana and worked as a journalist for state-owned media in the 1980s.

He has won a number of important prizes, including the Hammett Prize, awarded by the International Association of Crime Writers, on two occasions (1998 and 2006); Cuba's National Prize for Literature In 2012, and the Princess of Asturias Award for literature in Spain in 2015.

In 2016, Netflix released “Four Seasons in Havana,” a miniseries featuring detective Conde.

Despite the international recognition, only a few of Padura's books have been published in Cuba, and when they do, only a few copies are printed. Also, because of his critical, sometimes dark view of the island, his work is barely promoted or mentioned in the official media.

Unlike many writers and intellectuals who in recent years decided to leave Cuba, Padura — who travels extensively — is determined to stay.

“I have many reasons for living outside of Cuba but I think the ones that keep me here weigh more heavily. One of them is my sense of belonging," he says. "I have a strong sense of belonging to a reality, to a culture, to a way of seeing life, to a way of expressing myself.”

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Cuban writer Leonardo Padura gives an interview at his home in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, April 10, 2024. Padura has managed to turn his series of detective novels into a social and political chronicle of Cuba, especially his native Havana. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Cuban writer Leonardo Padura poses for a portrait in the street in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, April 10, 2024. Padura has managed to turn his series of detective novels into a social and political chronicle of Cuba, especially his native Havana. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Cuban writer Leonardo Padura poses for a portrait at his home in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, April 10, 2024. Padura has managed to turn his series of detective novels into a social and political chronicle of Cuba, especially his native Havana. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)