Black Box Recovered From Cuba Airliner Crash
Click For List Of Crash Victims
MIAMI (CBS4) - Officials have removed the black box from the aircraft that crashed in Cuba Thursday and vow to find out what caused the plane to go down. There were no survivors of an airplane crash in Cuba.
Cuban authorities say a state airliner flying from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to the capital of Havana crashed in a mountainous area after declaring an emergency Thursday evening, killing all 68 people aboard, including 28 foreigners.
AeroCaribbean Flight 883 went down near the village of Guasimal in Santi Spiritus province, carrying 61 passengers and a crew of seven.
Cuba's Civil Aviation Authority issued a statement early Friday saying there are no survivors.
A list of passengers indicates the dead include nine Argentines, seven Mexicans, three Dutch citizens, two Germans, two Austrians, a French citizen, an Italian, a Spaniard, a Venezuelan and a Japanese.
Cuban state media said that the plane was a French-built ATR-72 twin turboprop and that the crash site was not far from the Zaza reservoir, Cuba's largest, about 220 miles east of Havana.
The twice-a-week flight goes from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Santiago de Cuba to Havana. It had been due to land in the Cuban capital at 7:50 p.m, but reported an emergency at 5:42 p.m. and subsequently lost contact with air traffic controllers.
Havana-based CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum told CBS4 news on Friday morning that recovery efforts would begin at daybreak because it was simply too dark and dangerous to try any type of recovery in the rough terrain where the plane went down.
At Havana's national terminal, relatives of those on board the plane were kept isolated from other passengers and journalists.
"This is very sad," said Caridad de las Mercedes Gonzalez, who was manning an airport information desk. "We are very worried. This has taken us by surprise."
State media gave no details on what happened to the airliner, saying only that the cause of the crash was being investigated.
The flight would have been one of the last leaving Santiago de Cuba for Havana ahead of Hurricane Tomas, which was on a track to pass between Cuba's eastern end and the western coast of Haiti on Friday.
Cuban media said earlier that flights and train service to Santiago were being suspended until the storm passed.
AeroCaribbean is owned by Cuban state airline Cubana de Aviacion.
The last passenger plane crash on the island occurred in March 2002, when a Soviet-made biplane carrying 16 people -- including 12 foreigners -- plunged into a small reservoir in central Cuba.
The first ATR 72 was out into service by the French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR in 1988, and since them more than 400 have been built and deployed worldwide, including in the United States where more than 30 were flying for American Eagle.
Two of those planes were involved in crashes, one in Indiana in 1994 and another Puerto Rico in 2004.
The plane carries up to 72 people. AeroCaribbean is believed to have 5 of the aircraft in service.
The plane was operated by a small local charter company called Aerotaxi.
This report was supplemented by CBS News Producer Portia Siegelbaum.
