Mexico’s Global Air Sued in US for Plane Crash in Cuba

HAVANA TIMES – The families of three of the 112 people who died in an air accident in May in Cuba recently filed a lawsuit in the United States against the Mexican airline Global Air for alleged negligence, reported dpa last week.

The suit was filed in recent days before a Chicago court by the mother of two of the fatalities and the sister of another. They maintain that Global Air, a company from which Cubana de Aviacion rented the crashed plane, “was negligent in the training of its crew”, who died in the incident.

“We believe that the pilots lost control of the plane,” said lawyer Austin Bartlett, who represents the two women, a Cuban citizen and another US citizen. The aircraft fell shortly after taking off from the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana.

According to Bartlett, a specialist in this type of lawsuit, his clients seek to “recover all possible damages under the law in addition to the legal costs.”

“As the operator of the aircraft involved in the accident, Global Air was legally responsible for ensuring that its pilots receive adequate training on the apparatus for the safety of the crew and the safety of passengers,” the lawsuit states.

Back in July, the Mexican company reported that after extracting the data from the black boxes of the crashed plane it concluded that the crew “took off the aircraft with a very steep angle of ascent, causing aerodynamic problems that led to the crash.

The Cuban government considered the version of GlobalAir “premature” when affirming that the analysis of multiple factors is required and that the process has not yet concluded.

The only survivor of the air disaster is a 19-year-old Cuban girl, who after 70 days of hospitalization recently began a rehabilitation phase. The neurological status of the girl “progressively improves” and she is conscious, according to medical sources.