Cubana de Aviación Flight 972 was a scheduled domestic flight operated by Mexican charter airline Global Air on behalf of Cubana de Aviación, from José Martí International Airport, Havana, Cuba, to Frank País Airport in Holguín, Cuba.

operating the route crashed shortly after takeoff,[2][3] near Santiago de las Vegas, 19 kilometres (12 mi; 10 nmi) from Havana city centre.

The multinational investigation ultimately determined in September 2019 that the aircraft was outside centre of gravity, and the pilots were unsuccessful in an attempt to remedy issues related to the plane's loading/weight imbalance.

[18] President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Health Minister Roberto Morales, and other local authorities arrived at the site to observe and monitor the rescue efforts.

[7] The country declared an official period of mourning from 6 am on 19 May to 12 midnight on 20 May,[19] with flags to fly at half-mast outside government and military installations.

[20] The aircraft manufacturer Boeing said it was ready to send a technical team to Cuba "as permitted under US law and at the direction of the US National Transportation Safety Board and Cuban authorities".

[33] In the days following the crash, allegations were made by former workers and Cubana employees relating to Global Air's airworthiness, maintenance and safety record.

[34][35][36] Ovidio Martínez López, a pilot for Cubana for over 40 years until he retired in 2012, wrote in a Facebook post that a plane rented from the Mexican company by Cubana briefly dropped off radar while over the city of Santa Clara in 2010 or 2011, triggering an immediate response by Cuban aviation security officials.

Mexico's pilots union, Aviation Pilots Union Association [es] (Spanish: Asociación Sindical de Pilotos Aviadores; ASPA), said Global Air was "irresponsible" in releasing its statement before the investigation had been concluded, and that it did not take into account factors such as distribution of weight on the aircraft or possible equipment failures.

On 16 May 2019, the Cuban Institute of Civil Aeronautics released a statement which said "The most probable cause of the accident were the actions of the crew and their errors in the calculations of weight and balance that led to loss of control of the plane and its fall during the takeoff phase.

[15]: 56  IACC determined that the most probable cause of the crash "was the collapse of the aircraft as a result of its entry into abnormal positions immediately after liftoff during the takeoff, which led to the loss of control of the plane due to a chain of errors, with a predominance of the human factor".

[41] The report stated that the contributing human factors to this were "mostly due to inconsistencies in the crew's training, errors in weight and balance calculations and the low operational standards that were revealed during the flight", according to the translations by OnCuba News and Havana Times.