We can read in various digital sites including eleconomista.es (1) and in the Qué dailyt (2), that a Cubana de Aviacion flight that connected Madrid- Havana was canceled this past Saturday cause of a bomb threat . The news also toured social networks Twitter and Facebook, being a leit motive of alarmist comments on the websites from the ” anti-Castro” extreme right-wing (3).
All these sites refer to the original source of the news, the Spanish daily ABC, site from where was withdrawn, apparently, a few hours after publication (4).
But is the news true? Was a flight to Cuba due to a bomb alert was canceled? Not at all. The flight was canceled due to a technical fault. But when Cubana de Aviacion staff had tried to explain that, a passenger started screaming that she should see her son and that if the flight have not lift off, she would “blow up” the airplane. The Spanish Civil Guard then removed this person from the plane.
In the mentioned medias, which mention the original note of ABC, however, a story with another order of events can be read: ” when all passengers were inside the plane waiting for taking off a woman started screaming that fly the plane unless she could see her son. This fact caused that entire aircraft was evicted (5)”.
In that way, ABC became an angry reaction of a passenger after a suspension of a flight due to a technical fault in an alleged bomb threat and cause of such cancellation, creating an eye-catching headline.
But a few hours before the publication of the original notice in the digital version, several eyewitnesses went to ABC to clarify what had really happened.
Realizing its haste and lack of contrast of sources, ABC decided to remove the news; after making a fool to media as “Que” daily or to the eleconomista.es site, which today still maintain the new in the websites.; and after given a fresh cold water to the “anti-Castro” right-wing, that already saw in this incident a new argument for the campaign against tourism to the island.
Tourism that only in the month of January 2015 has grown a striking 16 percent (6).
2. http://www.que.es/ultimas-noticias/sucesos/201503152000-cancelan-vuelo-madrid-habana-amenaza.html
3. http://yusnaby.com/cancelan-vuelo-madrid-la-habana-por-amenaza-de-bomba/
4. https://www.google.es/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=FZYGVbKYD8aDUJ_5gYgH#q=ABC+Cubana+madrid
6. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2015/03/10/mundo/019n2mun
(José Manzaneda,Cubainformación)