Mexico bars Cuba crash airline, toll rises

Mexico has suspended operations of Aerolineas Damojh, whose plane crashed in Cuba last week, even as the toll has risen to 111 people.

The death toll in one of Cuba's worst air disasters has risen to 111 after Grettel Landrove, a 23-year old Cuban student, died in a Havana hospital.

Two Cuban women remain in critical condition due to burns and other trauma, with a high risk of complications, media reports said.

An ageing Boeing passenger jet crashed on Friday, shortly after takeoff from Havana, killing all but three of the 113 people on board, making it Cuba's deadliest air disaster in nearly 30 years.

Meanwhile, Mexico's civil aviation authority said it had temporarily suspended operations of Aerolineas Damojh , which owned the plane, while it reviews the Mexican airline service company.

The authority said it aims to make sure the company is adhering to regulations and gather information to help the ongoing investigation into the causes of the accident.

Operations at the little-known company, which had owned three 737s before the crash, were suspended twice before during regulatory compliance reviews, the authority said.

It first halted operations for about a month in 2010, after a Damojh plane made an emergency landing in the Mexican beach resort of Puerto Vallarta due to a problem with its landing gear.

The authority performed another investigation in 2013 after receiving a complaint from Marco Aurelio Hernandez, who has been identified by Mexican media as a former Damojh pilot. Hernandez was quoted at the weekend by Mexican newspapers criticizing Damojh for its safety record.

That probe led to a suspension for about two months.

Separately, Damojh has been subject to annual reviews, most recently in November 2017, the aviation authority said. The company has also renewed its airworthiness certificates every two years, most recently in October 2017.

Cuban investigators have so far recovered the cockpit voice recorder and were still looking for the flight data recorder.

Cuba will lead a probe, with the aid of Mexican and US investigators. It will receive technical assistance from Boeing and Pratt & Whitney, part of U.S.-based industrial group United Technologies, which manufactured the engines of the plane that crashed.

Friday's crash was the worst in Cuba since a Soviet-built Ilyushin-62M passenger plane came down near Havana in 1989 killing all 126 people on board and another 14 on the ground.