Crash
Eleven minutes after takeoff from Barbados's Seawell Airport (now Grantley Adams International Airport) and at an altitude of 18,000 feet, two bombs exploded on board. One was located in the aircraft's rear lavatory, and another in the midsection of the passenger cabin. The former ultimately destroyed the aircraft's control cables, while the latter created a hole in the aircraft and started a fire.
The plane went into a rapid descent, while the pilots tried unsuccessfully to return the plane to Seawell Airport. The captain, Wilfredo Pérez Pérez, radioed to the control tower: "We have an explosion aboard, we are descending immediately! ... We have fire on board! We are requesting immediate landing! We have a total emergency!" Realizing a successful landing was no longer possible, it appears that the pilot turned the craft away from the beach and towards the Atlantic Ocean, saving the lives of many tourists. This occurred about eight kilometres short of the airport.
All 73 passengers and 5 crew aboard the plane died: the passengers comprised 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese, and five North Koreans. Among the dead were all 24 members of the 1975 national Cuban fencing team that had just won all the gold medals in the Central American and Caribbean Championships; many were teenagers. Several officials of the Cuban government were also aboard the plane: Manuel Permuy Hernández, director of the National Institute of Sports (INDER); Jorge de la Nuez Suárez, secretary for the shrimp fleet; Alfonso González, National Commissioner of firearm sports; and Domingo Chacón Coello, an agent from the Interior Ministry . The 11 Guyanese passengers included five travelling to Cuba to study medicine, and the young wife of a Guyanese diplomat. The five Koreans were government officials and a cameraman.
Read more about this topic: Cubana Flight 455
Famous quotes containing the word crash:
“You crash over the trees,
you crack the live branch.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Crash on crash of the sea,
straining to wreck men, sea-boards, continents,
raging against the world, furious.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)