A military officer who declined to provide his name to reporters said that there appeared to have been three survivors in critical condition from the Cubana flight, but other officials declined to confirm that figure.

Firefighters rushed to extinguish flames engulfing the Boeing 737, which was meant to be on a short jaunt to the eastern Cuban city of Holguin when it went down just after lift off from Jose Marti International Airport.

Relatives of passengers were heading to the scene, among them a man who said that his wife and niece had been on board. He declined to provide his full name before he was taken to an airline terminal where relatives were being asked to gather. Reports said that 104 passengers and nine crew members were on board.

The plane was rented by Cubana, which has taken many of its aging planes out of service in recent months due to mechanical problems. Cuba’s First Vice-President, Salvador Valdes Mesa, met Thursday with Cubana officials to discuss improvements in its heavily criticized service. The airline is notorious among Cubans for its frequent delays and cancellations, which Cubana blames on a lack of parts and airplanes due to the U.S. trade embargo on the island.

Last year, a Cuban military plane crashed into a hillside in the western province of Artemisa, killing eight troops on board. In November 2010, an AeroCaribbean flight from Santiago to Havana went down in bad weather as it flew over central Cuba, killing all 68 people, including 28 foreigners, in what was Cuba’s worst air disaster in more than two decades.

The last Cubana accident appears to have been on Sept. 4, 1989, when a chartered Cubana plane flying from Havana to Milan, Italy, went down shortly after takeoff, killing all 126 people on board, as well as at least two dozen on the ground.

Cubana’s director general, Capt. Hermes Hernandez Dumas, told state media last month that Cubana’s domestic flights had carried 11,700 more passengers than planned between January and April 2018. It said that 64 percent of flights had taken off on time, up from 59 percent the previous year.

“Among the difficulties created by the U.S. trade embargo is our inability to acquire latest-generation aircraft with technology capable of guaranteeing the stability of aerial operations,” Hernandez said. “Another factor is obtaining parts for Cubana’s aircraft.”

CNN reported that A huge fireball was spotted after a Cubana airliner crashed during takeoff at Havana’s Jose Marti airport on Friday.

Reports also indicate that there is a thick plume of smoke visible around the airport.

Reports also coming from a source in the airport of firefighters trying to get the fire under control and a heavy police presence on the scene at the airport.

An aging fleet: In the last few weeks that Cubana de Avicion, Cuba’s national carrier, had to ground a number of their aging fleet because they said there were safety issues, though the cause of this crash is not known.