These are bullet holes, each one having pierced the fuselage of a passenger flight heading for Port-au-Prince in Haiti. The planes were hit with gunfire on Monday November 11th and had to land in the neighboring country of the Dominican Republic instead. Veuer’s Tony Spitz has the details.
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00:00These are bullet holes, each one having pierced the iconic yellow fuselage of a Spirit Airlines flight,
00:06one headed for Port-au-Prince in Haiti.
00:08The plane was hit with gunfire on Monday, November 11th,
00:11and had to land in the neighboring country of the Dominican Republic instead.
00:15In addition, a flight attendant was grazed with one of the bullets and needed medical attention upon landing.
00:20Luckily, there were no further injuries reported.
00:23This is just the latest incident where armed gangs in Port-au-Prince have shot at aircraft flying into the country.
00:28With a JetBlue flight also having reported being hit with a bullet on the same day,
00:33and a helicopter belonging to the United Nations was also struck just last month.
00:37The most recent incidents involving passenger jets have now prompted the Dominican Republic's president
00:42to declare the shooters terrorist gangs, even going so far as to ask the United States to do the same.
00:48Axios reports that Haiti has been under the grip of these gangs ever since the assassination of their president back in 2021.
00:55More recently, the gangs have made attempts to block all travel to and from the capital,
00:59using violence and disrupting travel on roads and at airports.
01:03Spirit has since announced it will suspend all flights to both the Haitian capital
01:07as well as its other airport in the north, pending further evaluation.