Fighter jets escort Cubans to U.S. soil

Smiling and dressed as for vacation, eight climb out of a cargo plane in Key West.

Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 12, 2002

KEY WEST -- A yellow single-engine cargo plane carried eight family members from Cuba to the Keys early Monday, as two Florida Air National Guard jets quickly scrambled for what turned out to be an escort to freedom.

The Russian-made Antonov, a plane used in Cuban for cargo transport, touched down at 10:38 at Key West International Airport.

The plane's left wing bore a Cuban flag. The aircraft had only enough seats -- including jump seats that fold down -- for three passengers, a pilot and a co-pilot.

On board were four men, three women and a 2-year-old girl.

"We believe they are all related," said Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Maria Elena Garcia.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel said friends and family in Cuba identified the pilot as Nemencio Carlos Alonso Guerra, 48, an employee of La Cubana Airlines at Pinal Del Rio in western Cuba. His wife, Magdalena Naranjo Morales, was left behind, stunned at his departure, the newspaper said.

"For us it's a tremendous surprise," she told the Sun-Sentinel. "No one is more revolutionary than he is."

The Cubans smiled as they carried two bags onto the tarmac and were surrounded by police.

"They were dressed like they were on vacation," said an airport employee who watched the group being led to INS and U.S. Customs offices. "They were smiling and casually walking with customs and INS agents."

INS agents interviewed them for more than six hours. Later they were to be processed at the Krome Avenue detention center in west Miami-Dade and and released to friends and family.

As the Cuban plane approached U.S. airspace, it was detected thousands of miles away in Riverside, Calif., by the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center, a radar tracking facility that identifies all planes entering U.S. air space, U.S. Customs spokesman Zachary Mann said.

The center notified the U.S. military, which at 9:50 a.m. ordered two Air Guard F-15 fighters from Homestead Air Reserve Base to intercept the plane and lead it toward Key West International.

"We had advance knowledge of it, but not much, just a few minutes," said Peter Horton, the airport's manager.

Cuban government officials in Washington did not release any details on the plane, its pilot or passengers. "Apparently, it was an act of piracy," said Luis Fernandez, a spokesman at the Cuban Interests Section.

Cubans have used a variety of Soviet-built aircraft to leave the island for Florida in recent years. Some were stolen by their pilots, others hijacked.

A stolen crop duster carrying 10 people from Cuba ran low on fuel and ditched in the Gulf of Mexico in September 2000. One man drowned.

One of the largest groups came in 1992. A Soviet twin-engine turboprop operated by Cuba's Aero Caribbean landed in Miami with a defecting pilot and 52 others. The co-pilot and four others returned to Cuba with the plane.

Havana maintains that under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, Washington invites Cubans to try anything from planes to inner tubes to reach the United States by promising them the right to stay if they reach American soil. Under the 1966 law, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are usually allowed to remain in the country.

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