Published Wednesday, September 20, 2000, in the Miami Herald  

Cubans rescued at sea

Nine survive plane crash; 1 dies in day of drama

BY LISA FUSS, SANDRA MARQUEZ GARCIA AND PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS

Ten Cubans apparently trying to flee western Cuba for Mexico's Yucatan on Tuesday in an aging Soviet-era crop-duster were picked up by a freighter when their plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea.

A U.S. Coast Guard spokesman in Miami said Capt. Konstantinos Kalaitgis of the MV Chios Dream radioed at 1:45 p.m. to say that one of the Cubans was dead, and that an adult man had serious head injuries. The group consisted of four men, three women and three children.

The plane's pilot was identified in an Agence France Press report from Havana as Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernández, 36, from Los Palacios. It quoted a friend of the pilot as saying he took his wife, Mercedes Martinez Paredes, his two sons, David, 7, and Erick, 13, and some friends. The pilot is assigned to crop-dusting in the Vuelta Abajo tobacco growing area, it said.

The Coast Guard planned to bring the survivor with head injuries to Ryder Trauma Center in Miami for medical treatment, following a stop at Lower Florida Keys Memorial Hospital. A doctor aboard the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Tropicale provided initial treatment because that vessel could reach the Chios Dream more quickly than the Coast Guard.

Dr. Myron Binns told Carnival that the seriously injured man was 36, and had suffered a skull laceration, a rib fracture, and a possible vertebrae fracture. He described the man as conscious and in stable condition, said Carnival spokesman Tim Gallagher.

The doctor also said a woman had suffered lacerations on a leg and facial swelling, and that another woman had a possible right clavicle fracture.

OTHER SURVIVORS

The Coast Guard in Key West said the other survivors are expected to be brought to the Key West Naval Station late Tuesday, where three FBI agents will interview them.

Ahead, a debate at the diplomatic level appears likely over whether the flight was a hijacking, or an escape led by the plane's pilot.

Judy Orihuela, spokesperson for the FBI in Miami, said it would be the FBI's job to interview the pilot and the passengers to determine what occurred.

``A much higher level than us -- I'm talking Washington -- would have to decide whether to prosecute,'' she said. ``Some of it would depend on what the Cuban government wants to do.''

It was a day of high drama full of frustration at first for the would-be rescuers, including search aircraft from the U.S. Air Force, and a small armada of ships, helicopters and a jet from the Coast Guard.

RADAR CONTACT

Cuban air controllers at first said a location off the Dry Tortugas near Key West was the site of the Russian-designed AN-2 plane's last radar contact, but later provided a different location closer to Cuba. The Chios Dream eventually picked up the survivors near the second search area.

A Coast Guard spokesman in Key West said the Chios Dream's captain -- whose 580-foot grain hauler was en route to New Orleans -- also indicated he had recovered pieces of the AN-2 single-engined aircraft from the sea.

According to U.S. officials, citing information provided by the Cubans, the plane took off from a strip at Pinar del Rio province west of Havana at 8:45 a.m. The survivors were found in the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico, about 180 miles southwest of Key West and 60 miles west north west of Cuba.

There was no immediate word from Havana on the rescue. Cuban radio and television evening news focused on the Olympic successes of the island's athletes, and did not mention the flight of the AN-2.

`KIDNAPPED'

It was Havana air traffic controllers who alerted their counterparts at the Federal Aviation Administration in Miami at 9 a.m. that the pilot of the plane had radioed to say he was being ``kidnapped.''

But a ham radio operator in Miami said a Cuban contact told him the plane's pilot picked up his family and friends at another location in Pinar del Rio after first letting his co-pilot get off the plane.

The radio operator, who asked not to be identified, said his Cuban contact disputed the use of the term ``kidnapping.''

``If it was a hijacking, the Cuban government could ask the United States to send them back,'' he said of the people on the plane. ``They would not be able to ask for asylum, because hijacking is a crime.''

He said the Cuban contact described the pilot as a Communist party member who was having problems with his political supervisors. The AFP story, however, quoted a cousin of the pilot as saying Iglesias was not in political hot water.

MASSIVE SEARCH

The day began with a massive search led by the U.S. Coast Guard based on radar coordinates provided by Havana, but it failed to find any sign of the missing plane. The AN-2 is a powerful, durable, workhorse used to do crop-dusting, transport up to 15 people, and haul cargo for short distances.

The first set of coordinates provided by Havana -- the last known radar contact -- placed the aircraft south of the Dry Tortugas, at the extreme western end of the Florida Keys. Spokesmen for the Department of Defense, the FAA and the Coast Guard said the plane never showed up on U.S. radar, nor did it ever make radio contact.

At midday, after a Coast Guard Falcon HU-25 based out of Opa-locka did not find the plane, the search shifted to a 50-by-100 mile grid much farther west, on new coordinates provided by Havana.

Both Key West and Yucatan are about 150 miles from western Cuba.

Kathleen Bergen, the FAA's spokesman in Atlanta, said the air traffic controllers in Havana provided the information during their daily conversation with FAA controllers in Miami about previously scheduled overflights of Cuba by commercial aircraft. The Cubans said the aircraft had only a limited fuel supply.

THE PLANE

The FAA, she said, immediately notified the Coast Guard, which led the subsequent search for the plane, and the FBI, which became the lead investigative agency.

Havana said the plane had just completed a cropdusting flight. It said it was launching its own search, but asked U.S. authorities to help.

At an early afternoon press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said two Florida Air National Guard F-15 jets dispatched from Homestead's air base at 10 a.m., and a radar-equipped early warning system aircraft from Tinker Air Force Base, near Oklahoma City, also did not track the missing plane on their radar.

AIR GUARD

Later, two F-16 fighters from the Minnesota Air National Guard operating out of Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City relieved the F-15s. A KC-135 tanker was launched from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa to support the operation.

The Coast Guard provided three HH-65s Dolphin helicopters, one HU-25 Falcon jet, and three cutters, the 110-foot Monhegan, the 110-foot Nantucket, and the 210-foot Courageous.

The Monhegan, according to Suddarth, had just repatriated seven Cuban rafters to the Cuban port of Bahia de Cabanas and was leaving when word of the missing plane was relayed from Miami.

A C-130 transport based at Clearwater also patrolled the rescue area, ready to drop liferafts if any more survivors were found.

RESCUE TEAM

It also was a frustrating day for Brothers to the Rescue.

The Miami-based group sent up two planes to search for survivors and packed life jackets, five water jugs, and a life raft.

``The thing here is time,'' said Jose Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue as he packed the plane.

``Thankfully, '' Basulto said, ``the plane they were flying in is one of the easiest to survive a crash because it flies at low speeds and can float for a few seconds once it hits the water.''

He said he didn't know any of the circumstances as to whether it was hijacked or who was on board.
FIRST AREA

But like the Coast Guard and the Air Force, Basulto's planes searched the first area identified by the Cubans, and found nothing. The location where the Chios Dream found the survivors was beyond the range of his planes, Basulto said.

Herald staff writers Jennifer Babson, Manny Garcia, Curtis Morgan, Marika Lynch and Charles Rabin and Herald translator Renato Perez contributed to this report.

Copyright 2000 the Miami Herald.
Republished here with the permission of the Miami Herald. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the written approval of The Miami Herald.