– The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered the cancellation of all flights to Haiti for a month after two jets of US airline companies were hit by gunfire while flying over Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince.
USA / HAITI – The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered the cancellation of all flights to Haiti for a month after two jets of US airline companies were hit by gunfire while flying over Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince.
A Spirit Airlines plane was hit by gunfire while attempting to land in Port-au-Prince on Monday. While a post-flight inspection in New York of a JetBlue plane found bullet damage on one of the planes returning from Haiti. The same time, Haitian authorities have suspended for a week all flights in and out of Port-au-Prince.
On Tuesday, the FAA prohibited for 30 days all US civil aviation operations in Haiti below 10,000 feet.
Haiti has been in the grip of out-of-control gang violence and political chaos for nearly a year. Helicopters, vehicles, and even embassies of foreign countries and international organizations have come under gunfire.
Spiraling gang war has caused the repeated closures of both airport and main seaport in the Haitian capital, thus blocking supplies of food and humanitarian aid to the Caribbean nation.
On Monday, Spirit said its Flight 951 from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Port-au-Prince was forced to land in Santiago in the Dominican Republic, and that “an inspection revealed evidence of damage to the aircraft consistent with gunfire.”
Following the Spirit incident, JetBlue and American Airlines suspended flights to and from Haiti, and JetBlue extended its flight suspension through 2 December after identifying damage from a bullet in one of its planes returning from Haiti.
“We are actively investigating this incident in collaboration with relevant authorities,” JetBlue said, citing “the going civil unrest” for its decision to suspend flights.