Cuban steals a plane and flies to Florida, USA

Cuba said Saturday that it is investigating the theft of a small plane by a Cuban pilot that landed in Florida, in the United States.

“Acts of air piracy constitute specific crimes in the various international conventions ratified by Cuba and the United States,” the official newspaper “Granma” quoted the civil airline of the Caribbean country as saying.

The state entity explained that “an aircraft of the type AN-2, identified with flight CNI 400, registered CU A1885, belonging to the National Air Service Company (ENSA), took off from the economic unit of the ENSA base from Sancti Spíritus. (Downtown), at 07:00 Morning, heading to El Sedro runway to do agricultural fumigation.”

“After completing its second application flight, the plane with the captain on board has not returned to the runway,” said Cuban authorities, who said the pilot was Rubén Martinez.

Related news: More than 40 Cuban immigrants arrested on landfall in Florida and 68 repatriated

The airline confirmed today that it has not received any “official notification from US agencies”.

“This fact constitutes a violation of Cuban airspace, operational and aviation safety regulations, consistent with the annexes to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention),” the press release adds.

Independent media broke the news the day before and detailed that Cuban landed about four hours later at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the central Everglades.

Some Cubans stole a boat from Port Mariel last month to get to the United States, but that country’s coast guard was under guard.

Cuba has not officially confirmed this information, which was revealed on social media.

The US Department of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded the arrival of 224,607 Cubans to this country from October 2021 to September 2022.

This figure exceeds the largest influx of Cubans to date, which was reported in 1980, when 125,000 people left through the port of Mariel in just 7 months.

Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard has intercepted 5,392 Cubans at sea since October 1, 2021, when the current fiscal year began.