the plane. Other bombings in the summer included a number of offices of airlines carrying out business with Cuba, including the offices of the BWIA West Indies Airways in Barbados; of Air Panama in Colombia; and of Iberia and Nanaco Line in Costa Rica. Other attacks included the murder of a Cuban official in Mexico and two more Cuban officials in Argentina; the September assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C.; and "a mysterious fire in Guyana [which] destroyed a large quantity of Cuban-supplied fishing equipment." Preparations On 5 October 1976, Lugo and Hernán Ricardo Lozano left Caracas for Trinidad, arriving at 1 a.m. The following day, they sought to board Cubana de Aviación flight number CU-455, which was scheduled to fly from Guyana to Havana, Cuba, via Trinidad, Barbados, and Kingston, after rejecting an offer of an earlier flight with British West Indies Airways (BWIA). With a member of the Cuban fencing team waiting for the Cubana flight assisting with interpretation, the pair were able to insist on boarding the later Cubana flight. The pair left the flight at Barbados, and later returned to Trinidad. Crash Eleven minutes after takeoff from Barbados' Seawell Airport (now Grantley Adams International Airport) and at an altitude of , two bombs exploded on board. One was located in the aircraft's rear lavatory, and another in the midsection of the passenger cabin. The former ultimately destroyed the aircraft's control cables, while the latter blasted a hole in the aircraft and started a fire. The plane went into a rapid descent, while the pilots tried unsuccessfully to return the plane to Seawell Airport. The captain, Wilfredo Pérez Pérez, radioed to the control tower: "We have an explosion aboard – we are descending immediately!... We have fire on board! We are requesting immediate landing! We have a total emergency!" Realizing a successful landing was no longer possible, it appears that the pilot turned the craft away from the beach and towards the Caribbean Sea off Porters, St James, saving the lives of many tourists. The crash occurred about eight kilometres short of the airport. All 48 passengers and 25 crew aboard the plane died: the victims comprised 57 Cubans, eleven Guyanese, and five North Koreans. Among the dead were all 24 members of the 1975 national Cuban fencing team that had just won every gold medal in the Central American and Caribbean Championships; many were teenagers.