The Mexican charter company which owned the plane that crashed in Havana on Friday, killing 110 people, has 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.
The plane that crashed 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 said.
Ovidio Martinez Lopez, a pilot for Cubana for more than 40 years until he retired six years ago, wrote 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 the aviation security authority issued a formal recommendation that Cubana stop renting planes and crews from the Mexican company, Martinez wrote.