Emergency Landing in Santiago de Cuba
HAVANA TIMES — A Cubana Airlines plane made an emergency landing in Santiago de Cuba on Thursday, the second in less than 20 days, reported Diario de Cuba. No injuries were reported.
According to the website’s correspondent in Santiago, the night flight from Havana to Santiago made several attempts to land at the Antonio Maceo International Airport, “apparently due to difficulties with the landing gear.”
After several failed attempts to land, and circling for over an hour, the crew advised passengers of the “emergency situation for technical reasons,” notes Diario de Cuba.
Finally, the Airbus 320 aircraft was able to land safely while ambulances and fire trucks were present just in case.
As usual in such matters, the Cuban media either doesn’t report the events or does so several days later.
Diario de Cuba noted that similar landing problems occurred with the same airplane on April 19.
To the best of my knowledge, the Airbus 320 has a very good record but I believe it is somewhat dated. I travel quite a lot with Monarch Airlines who have replaced all their 320 fleet with the Airbus 321. We are visiting Cuba again in 2014 and for the first time taking an internal flight from Havana to Holguin. Hopefully these incidents will have been rectified long before then before something more serious occurs.
Interestingly, the UK FCO advise against taking internal flights in Cuba.
very dangerous airplanes