9 Cubans Rescued After Plane Crashes in Sea

Nine Cubans attempting to flee the communist island in an aging crop duster were rescued at sea Tuesday after the single-engine Soviet-built biplane apparently ran out of fuel and plunged into the Gulf of Mexico.

The body of a 10th person was pulled from the ocean about 60 miles west of Cuba, where a passing freighter found the survivors clinging to the plane’s wreckage.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said the survivors--three men, three women and three children--were taken aboard the cargo ship Chios Dream, which was steaming toward Key West on Tuesday night.

One of the men suffered critical injuries to his head and neck, and the Coast Guard raced to save him.

In a daring rescue carried out in stormy seas, the 36-year-old man was hoisted off the deck of the Panamanian-registered freighter and into an H60 Jayhawk helicopter hovering above. The man was brought to a hospital in Key West just before 11 p.m. EDT.

A flight surgeon aboard the chopper planned to examine the other survivors, said Rear Adm. Thad Allen.

The other eight Cubans, along with the dead man pulled from the ocean, were being transferred to the Coast Guard cutter Nantucket, which met up with the freighter about 200 miles southwest of Key West.

The fate of the latest Cuban refugees is uncertain.

“I imagine there will be a lot of questions about what should be done about the people that are found alive,” President Clinton said in Washington. “I think the most important thing now is just to worry about their care.”

It was unclear late Tuesday if the Soviet-built Antonov An-2 was hijacked or whether the pilot had merely picked up relatives early Tuesday and was attempting to defect, as one report out of Cuba suggested. Neither was it known whether the plane--a workhorse aircraft used for both short passenger runs and low-altitude agricultural spraying--had run out of fuel or had pontoons.

Nor was it clear just where the pilot was heading.

What does seem clear is that the crash, the fortuitous rescue and the daring medical evacuation underway late Tuesday make up one more chapter in a 40-year history of high drama involving Cubans fleeing their homeland.

Almost 10 months have passed since 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez was found adrift off the Florida coast in an inner tube. His arrival touched off a wrenching ordeal that included an international custody fight, new tensions between two nations that still do not have diplomatic relations and a federal raid that returned the child to Cuba. The Elian saga remains an emotional touchstone for many Miami exiles.

But Cubans arrive in South Florida every week unheralded, either in smugglers’ boats or, bearing false immigration papers, on flights from third countries.

Under current U.S. immigration policy, Cubans who reach shore are almost always permitted to stay. Those interdicted at sea typically are repatriated unless they can make a persuasive argument that they would be persecuted if returned to Cuba.

Since May 1995, when the present migration accord with Cuba effectively halted a flood of rafters crossing the Florida Straits, more than 2,600 Cuban refugees have been returned to the island.

The eight Cuban survivors who were picked up by the Nantucket will likely be brought ashore in Florida, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Danielle DeMarino. “We will take them to a hospital in Key West or Miami,” she said. “It will depend on their injuries.”

U.S. officials first got word of the unauthorized flight about 8 a.m. EDT, when air traffic controllers in Havana called their Miami counterparts to report that a small plane had been hijacked and was heading north. The plane apparently took off from Herradura Airport in Pinar del Rio, the tobacco-rich province that includes the western end of the island.

An official of Cuba’s Civil Aviation Institute told Reuters news agency in Havana that the aircraft was being used as a crop duster.

The Coast Guard in Miami was informed that the plane--reported to be low on fuel--went down in the ocean about 10:50 a.m., according to Senior Chief Petty Officer Carolyn Cihelka.

Two F-16 jets from Homestead Air Force Reserve Base were quickly dispatched and an AWACS radar plane was sent. By early afternoon, the sentry plane had picked up the downed plane’s emergency signal.

The original hunt was centered south of the Marquesas Keys, about 25 miles west of Key West. But a search by several Coast Guard ships, planes and helicopters turned up nothing. The Miami exile group Brothers to the Rescue also sent up two small planes in an effort to assist in the hunt.

But the plane’s whereabouts remained a mystery for several hours.

The wreckage was discovered about 300 miles southwest of the search area, near the northeast corner of the Yucatan Channel, a 150-mile-wide passage between western Cuba and Cancun, Mexico. Visibility was good and the seas were choppy Tuesday, according to the Coast Guard. But the crash site was squeezed by two sprawling tropical depressions, with the westernmost poised to flare into a tropical storm and steam toward Texas by today, forecasters said.

Most Cubans who flee the island typically come to the U.S. by boat. But in recent years, defectors also have arrived in Florida in dozens of aircraft, including Russian-built MIGs, helicopters, small planes and commercial airliners. At least twice before, in July 1991 and in December 1993, the same model Antonov An-2 was used. Those planes were returned to Cuba.

Although the U.S. and Cuba do not have regular diplomatic relations, the nations have signed a treaty on hijacking. But enforcement is sporadic. In August 1996, three Cubans who crashed a hijacked plane into the ocean were prosecuted and acquitted in federal court in Tampa. The Cubans were allowed to remain in the U.S.

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Times staff writer Melissa Healy in Washington and researcher Anna M. Virtue in Miami contributed to this story.