The sentence that the airline did not want to hear
A Mexican judge has just handed down the verdict. The plane that crashed in Cuba in 2018, killing 112 people, should never have taken off. Serious maintenance failures, says the ruling. Pure negligence.
The owner company, Damojh Airlines, was sentenced to pay millionaire compensation for moral damage. The curious – or predictable – thing is that he did not even appear at the trial. She was sentenced in absentia.
An “institutional accident”
The independent expert opinion was clear. They called it an “institutional accident”. The problems came from within the company. The pilots were the last barrier, but not even they could prevent the crash minutes after takeoff.
The accident was an “institutional accident”, caused by negligence within the company.
The amount: 1.5 million dollars for each family of the four crew members who initiated the lawsuit. The insurer of the Boeing 737, by the way, was acquitted. All responsibility lies with the operator.
The flight was a Boeing 737 operated as Global Air, rented from Cubana de Aviación. It took off from José Martí airport in Havana in May 2018. Of the 113 on board, only one person survived.
For families, this ruling is about more than money. It is an official recognition of what they always knew: that it was not bad luck, it was an avoidable failure. A scathing—and expensive—reminder that in aviation, cutting back on safety is very expensive.
