Cuba’s Precautions Against Hijackings

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32296, 14 May 1970, Page 7

Cuba’s Precautions Against Hijackings

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright)

NEW YORK. Cuba, the Mecca of aircraft hijackers, has developed a careful system to prevent hijackings of her own passenger flights, the Associated Press reports.

All Cuban passenger aircraft are specially equipped] to prevent access to the cockpit, and carry two heavily armed guards, sometimes disguised as crew members, according to a former member of Cuba’s Revolutionary Air Force, vho fled from the island a few months ago. Mr Jose Humberto Ibarzabal, who also worked with the Cuban Aviation Company on loan from the Air Force, said in a recent interview that the guards go on duty several hours before a flight is to take off. They make a careful inspection of the aircraft to prevent fugitives from stowing away, something that happened two or three times before the adoption of the new system, he said. “On domestic flights, the two uniformed guards occupy special seats in the cockpit, armed with sub-machineguns and pistols,” he said. Mr Ibarzabal said that noone was permitted to enter or leave • the cockpit during flight, and that the crew members there had to take their meals in with them at the start of the flight.

“On international flights, to save face, the armed guards pass as a substitute flight engineer, sitting in the cockpit, and as chief steward, keeping watch on the attitudes and movements of the passengers,” he said. The flight crew is separated from the passengers by a partition and door of steel nearly an inch thick, and in the newest commercial aircraft—acquired from the Soviet Union—the door and wall are bullet-proof, he said. The guard force is said to be made up of 50 youths about 20 years old. Their chief is Mr Jose Pantoja Tamayo, whose brother died in the ill-fated guerrilla campaign of Dr Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia, Mr Ibarzabal said.