Helicopter crash in Cuba kills five crew members
HAVANA, Jan 30th A helicopter of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of Cuba crashed this Friday in the east of the country with five crew members on board, who died in the accident.
According to a note from MINFAR, broadcast by the official radio station Radio Reloj, the aircraft was moving from Holguín province to Guantánamo when it crashed into an elevation.
A commission of the Armed Forces is investigating the causes of the accident, says the statement, which did not disclose the identity of the occupants of the aircraft.
In a publication on the social network Twitter, the user @ Adrleo2015 assured that it was an Aerogaviota helicopter, an airline belonging to the FAR, that hit the Loma de la Mensura, in Pinares de Mayarí, Holguín province.
The Facebook group “Aviation lovers in Cuba” published a post reporting the incident, in which some users identified three of the crew members as Luis Miguel González, a man named Verdecia and a flight engineer named Nivaldo. “They were all from (the town) Los Cocos, in Playa Baracoa,” Bauta municipality, Artemisa province, said that publication.
People who commented on the post claim that it was a Mi-17 converted to a Mi-8, with less than two years of use. Last December, Russia announced that it would allocate the necessary technologies for Cuba to modernize its military companies, including its helicopters.
In April 2017, an AN-26 tactical transport plane, also belonging to the FAR airline, Aerogaviota, collided with Loma de la Pimienta, Candelaria municipality, in the province of Artemisa. The ship had taken off at 06:38 in the morning from the Playa Baracoa airport, Bauta municipality, and as a result of the accident the eight soldiers on board, including the crew members, died.
In 2018, one of the most tragic air accidents in Cuban history occurred when a Boeing 737, leased by the state airline Cubana de Aviación to the Mexican company Global Air, collapsed near the José Martí International Airport with 113 people on board.
