Brothers
to the Rescue’s (BTTR) aircraft encountered MiGs from Fidel Castro’s Air Force
in international airspace, North of Cuba, for the first time on July 21,
1991. This incident, identified in the
US Coast Guard document dated July 23, 1991, in Tab 11 of this dossier,
resulted in the dispatch of US interceptors from Homestead Air Force Base. Shortly after this incident, Mrs. Mary Ann
Zdunczyk, FAA, Assistant Manager for Plans & Procedures, Miami Flight
Service Station, Tamiami Airport, called a meeting to prevent a future incident and/or a possible mishap. This conference meeting was attended by José
J. Basulto, President of BTTR, and by representatives from several US
government agencies, including: Air Force, FAA, Customs Service, Coast Guard,
Border Patrol, FBI, CIA, etc.
As
a result of this meeting, BTTR agreed
with the US authorities present to voluntarily participate, for its own safety,
in the continuance of its flights, in a new protocol designed by the US
Government. The main elements of
this protocol with which BTTR agreed to comply were:
1. File an international
flight plan, on each of its future missions, an hour in advance of
departure, for each participating aircraft crossing south of the 24th
parallel. At that time, flight plans
were not required by the FAA unless the airplanes landed at a foreign port
prior to return to the US, which was not the case for BTTR.
Each flight plan would require the FAA to assign a unique transponder code to identify
each BTTR aircraft on any monitoring radar, including Cuba’s. Such codes were not required even in
international flights under visual flight rules (VFR).
Also included in the flight plan were the name of
the pilot, purpose of the flight, and the area and time of operations. It was agreed, and became procedure, that
although the flights were not intended to terminate in Cuba or enter Cuban
territory, the FAA would routinely
forward the flight plans to the Cuban authorities.
2.
Make
a radio call to Havana Center on its
active frequency ten minutes prior to crossing southbound on the 24th
parallel to indicate BTTR’s presence under an active US flight plan.
THIS
PROTOCOL HAS BEEN FOLLOWED BY BTTR TO THE LETTER SINCE JULY 1991 TO THE
PRESENT, INCLUDING ON FEBRUARY 24,
1996.