All the passengers had taken their seats but the plane remained grounded. Over the intercom Captain Marshall announced: “The incompetence of the locals is beyond comprehension.” He later added, “The Cubans haven’t quite got up to speed yet, so we all have to suffer because of that.” (This second comment was recorded by David Hugill of Burnaby, British Columbia.)
On a December 5, 2016 flight from Holguín, Cuba to Miami, Florida, American Airlines flight 1482 experienced delays and left Frank País airport two hours after its scheduled departure. Apparently, inconsistencies between the documented and actual number of passengers on board and the weight of the plane were a cause. An additional reason for the delay was likely the large number of people departing eastern Cuba following the burial of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. As a historian of Cuba, I was in Santiago to conduct interviews and document the events surrounding Fidel’s death. Other passengers included members of the press, U.S. and Canadian tourists, a group of U.S. missionaries, Cubans, and Cuban Americans returning home.
It is only in the past three months, since September 7, 2016, that American Airlines has operated regularly scheduled flights to Cuba. The December 2014 rapprochement between Cuba and the United States and the subsequent February 2016 memorandum authorized commercial flights to the island. These supplement the expensive charter flights, which held a monopoly on U.S.-Cuba travel from the late 1970s to this year.
Captain Marshall’s disparaging appraisal of the Cuban airport system replicated historical American impressions of Cubans as underdeveloped and backward. The 1901 Platt Amendment, for example, was premised on the belief that the Cuban people were incapable of governing themselves. While the presence of U.S. commercial airlines in Cuba suggests improved regard for Cuban sovereignty, the sentiment expressed by Captain Marshall reveals how some Americans might still struggle to accept a Cuba undisposed to accommodate U.S. demands.
Speaking anonymously, one flight attendant said the pilot demonstrated a lack of understanding of cultural differences. The fact that the bilingual flight attendants did not translate Marshall’s English-language comments into Spanish also suggests an awareness of how they would be received by the non-English speakers. Indeed, when I stood and translated the captain’s explanation for the passengers in my section, some expressed frustration. Orlando, Florida resident José, who declined to give his last name, said the pilot’s “improper” comments made him “angry” and showed a clear “lack of respect.” Sharmeen Khan, of Toronto, Ontario, later informed me that she gave the pilot the middle finger from her seat.
But not all passengers took issue with Captain Marshall’s comments. When I advanced to the front of the plane to ask for the pilot’s name and complain about his “racist” statement, a middle-aged, male passenger remarked that there was nothing wrong with the pilot’s remarks. According to him, “the incompetence of the locals” was not a racist remark. The passenger implied that since the pilot had not explicitly referenced race or ethnicity, his comments were a legitimate expression of frustration.
But Captain Marshall’s critique of the Cuban airport system overlooked the dismal record of on-time departures Miami International Airport, where he appears to be based. An August 2016 report from the Bureau of Information Statistics ranked MIA last in its analysis of flight departures from the 29 largest U.S. airports. American Airlines operates nearly 70 percent of flights at MIA, where flight delays recently averaged close to 78 minutes.
If American Airlines is interested in continuing commercial flights with Cuba, it would do well to provide its staff with cultural awareness training and hold crew members responsible for words or actions critical of a specific race or government. Likewise, Captain Marshall would do well to follow the lead of Pedro, a Cuban-American passenger, who responded to Marshall’s remarks by saying we should “turn a calm face to the sea.”