MIAMI — The mass exodus from Cuba took an unusual twist Friday, when a pilot in a Soviet-era biplane took off from the island just 90 miles south of Key West and landed on an isolated, mostly forgotten airstrip in the middle of the Everglades.
Running low on fuel, the pilot contacted the control tower at the airport used mainly for training about 50 miles west of Miami and said he needed to touch down quickly. The call to the tower gave federal agents enough time to race to the jetport to meet the pilot.
“He said he was a defector from Sancti Spiritus, Cuba,” said Gregory Chin, a spokesperson for the Miami-Dade County Aviation Department, which owns the airstrip, once slated to become a massive jetport in the Everglades. Sancti Spiritus is located in central Cuba, roughly 270 miles from the landing spot, and is one of the island’s oldest Cuban European settlements.
