Family and friends of Julio C. Pineda, one of the five Cubans who died in the accident involving an Amazon cargo flight at Miami International Airport, bid their final farewell in a private ceremony held at Vior Funeral Home, located at 291 Northwest 37th Avenue in the city.
Pineda, 75 years old, lost his life on September 6 when the Boeing 767-300 from flight 7598 of 21 Air -operated for Amazon- skidded off the runway after landing at an excessive speed and struck the van in which he and six other coworkers were returning after an eight-hour shift.
Those who knew him remembered him as a warm-hearted man whom they nicknamed "the Magician" for his magic tricks, his jokes, and his habit of handing out candies to the children in the neighborhood.
“ I have known him for 13 years through the Mago. A very helpful person, very charismatic, very affectionate with all the neighbors, with all the children,” said his neighbor Jorge Samper to Univisión 23.
Jenny, the wife of one of Pineda's sons, spoke over the phone with Diario Las Américas and acknowledged that the family still could not come to terms with the loss.
She also noted that -until Sunday, September 13- they had not received back her father-in-law's personal belongings and that the only information they had about the accident was what had been publicly disclosed. In general, the woman expressed dissatisfaction with the care they received from the companies associated with the flight.
Pineda, a father of two, arrived in the United States from Cuba in May 2001 and had been living in Miami for over two decades, where he worked for Professional Ocean Service Corporation, an airport cleaning company contracted at MIA.
Janette Suárez, president of that company, summed up the plight of these invisible victims: "When you sit on the plane, you don't realize the work they do. They have lives. They are people: parents, grandparents, uncles."
Along with Pineda, four other Cubans passed away: Javierky Reyes Quevedo (47 years old), Carlos Acosta Fajardo (53), Rolando Alemán León (55), and Yoel Rodríguez Naranjo (53).
On Sunday, there was also the farewell for Carlos Arturo Acosta Fajardo. His widower, Nelson Fernández, described him as "an exceptional person, so special, so original" and summed up his grief in one sentence: "He took my life with him; he died along with him."
The couple had met in Cuba six years earlier and had been married for three years. The blow was twofold: Carlos Acosta Fajardo's birthday was on September 11, just five days after the tragedy.
By the end of Sunday, two formal lawsuits had been filed: one by the widow of Yoel Rodríguez Naranjo and another by the only survivor in stable condition, Roosevelt Perdomo Torres.
The lawyers for the families of Pineda and Acosta Fajardo were still assessing the information before taking legal action, waiting for the investigation to progress.
The preliminary data from the National Transportation Safety Board indicates that the aircraft touched down at 158 knots, a high speed for that phase of the flight. One of the pilots warned several times about the excessive speed during the approach.
Flight records also revealed that the throttles were at maximum power in the seconds leading up to the impact and that neither the aerodynamic brakes nor the thrust reversers were deployed.
Although many details are already known from the analysis of the black box recordings, the official causes of the accident have not yet been determined.
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