Professional Pilot, October 2016

Bermuda led by Chairman Manuel Jorge Cutillas great grandson of the founder Don Facundo disapproved the purchase and the Learjet was sold to the famous car racer Roger Penske An actual Learjet sale in Cuba was an exception I wrote about this in more detail Pro Pilot Mar 2011 p 40 but it is proper to summarize it here In the early 1980s while working with Duncan Aviation in Lincoln NE as president of Management Jets Worldwide we unsuspectingly sold a Learjet 35 to a man who had been pretending to be a Panamanian businessman I should have suspected that he was buying the airplane for someone else because he never wanted to look over the airplane or even have a flight demonstration All he wanted to do was to buy a Lear 35 and cared nothing about the details We received the full payment the next morning The aircraft ended up in Havana but was flown with Nicaraguan registration courtesy of the Sandinista Government there This sale was against US law so I reported it right away to the FBI of course They gave me a phone number to call if I ever heard from them again The aircraft came back to Duncan at Lincoln for service flown by Cuban pilots with Nicaraguan diplomatic passports They also had Cuban service passports The FBI told me there was nothing they could do about this Eventually US customs authorities confiscated the aircraft on the basis that it was never legally exported to Cuba or Nicaragua as we had exported it to Panama In Washington DC I met Antonio Quesada nephew of General and FAA Administrator Pete Quesada Antonio was an official at the OAS Organization of American States In this capacity he was several times picked up and flown to Havana in this Nicaraguan registered Learjet Cubana de Aviación the national Cuban airline was founded in 1929 and started service to Miami in 1945 with Douglas DC3s Later they operated Lockheed Super Constellations and Vickers Viscount turboprops They were one of the few buyers of the Bristol Britannia a large 4 engine British turboprop After the revolution 56 PROFESSIONAL PILOT October 2016 On March 20 2016 US Pres Barack Obama made a historic flight into Cuba Air Force One here is observed by locals as it arrives in Havana Cubana operated for years with Tupolev 154 and Ilyushin 62 type aircraft the usual Soviet imports but they later replaced them with newer Tupolev 204s and Ilyushin 96s Looking at Cubana today its clear to see that they need modern and economical airliners if they want to compete in the world markets The Cuban Air Force before the revolution flew only US made aircraft After the revolution they started flying the MiG15s of Korean War fame The 2 Cuban pilots of the Castro Learjet were both captains in the Cuban Air Force and flew MiG15s They were outspokenly very critical of the Soviet instructors they had near Moscow where they lived in barely heated barracks and received verbal and written training in Russian which they could not understand With new diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba we still cannot count on the development of a market for private and business aircraft in the island maybe not even for new cars The Cubans could sell their 1950s cars to US collectors but all cars in Cuba are owned by the government There is simply no private capital for private aircraft Cuba went bankrupt was then maintained by the Soviet Union until it too went bankrupt then it was maintained by Venezuela until it also went bankrupt So who is going to keep Cuba going now Will it be the USA Alex Kvassay spent 30 years in international business aviation sales working for both Beech and Learjet concluding with Management Jets Worldwide of which he was CEO based in Paris His book Alex in Wonderland outlines his life and career Now 89 his 300 scrapbooks assembled after each of his milestone trips abroad serve as basis for this series Roger Penske American race car driver and entrepreneur bought a brand new Learjet 24 after it was owned for a short time by the Bacardi company Antonio Quesada an official at the Organization of American States OAS was flown into Cuba on several occasions aboard the Nicaraguan registered Learjet 35 which in fact belonged to the Cuban government Russian built Tupolev 204s currently serve as mainstay for Cubana de Aviación the national Cuban airline Before Castro came to power in 1959 the US supplied aircraft to the Cuban Air Force Afterward came the Russian MiG 15 fighter jets