Second black box located from Cuba plane crash

Specialists from Cuba, the United States and Mexico have located the second black box from a plane crash last week that left 111 people dead.

Armando Daniel Lopez, president of Cuba's civil aeronautics institute, told local media the Boeing 737's box was identified yesterday by its numbering, and discovered following a search aided by video footage and sworn statements from locals.

The first black box from the flight, which crashed shortly after taking off from Havana's Jose Marti airport with 113 people on board on May 18, was found last weekend.

The accident killed 100 Cubans, the six Mexican crew members, and five foreign passengers: two Argentines, one Mexican and two passengers from Western Sahara. The only two survivors remain in a critical condition in a Havana hospital.

 

According to Daniel, investigations into the cause of the crash will take months due to the strict international protocols that must be followed.

The 39-year-old plane, leased from Global Air, a Mexican company, was on a domestic flight to the eastern city of Holguin, where most of the passengers were from.

Built in 1979, according to the Mexican government, it last passed inspection in November 2017.

After it crashed into a potato field, most of the plane was reduced to a mangled carcass of burned metal.

Witnesses and airport officials told AFP that the aircraft plunged as it was making its first turn after take-off -- coming down just 200 metres from houses between the Boyeros and Santiago de Las Vegas districts south of Havana.