The details are still a little murky — and they're coming from a variety of sources in and around Venezuela, so... — but I do know that a private jet crashed on Wednesday afternoon, around 1 p.m. eastern, at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, Venezuela. The city of Maiquetía sits just outside of the capital, Caracas, and this is the airport that handles the majority of the country's flights. 

Many Latin American outlets are reporting that the plane belongs to Nicolás Maduro's regime, and flight records suggest that it makes regular trips to and from Cuba, particularly in recent months. The Learjet 55 with registration YV3440 allegedly crashed on the runway upon takeoff (or landing, depending on who you ask), leading to a column of smoke that was visible far and wide. Early reports claim that four people on board died, though it now appears that two people survived the crash. It's not clear how many passengers there were in total or who the deceased or survivors might be, though some have speculated that they were the plane's pilots, Riger Bermúdez and David Daza. 

Assuming they're the passengers who survived, they're both reportedly in a hospital in Caracas in stable condition. One of the men, Bermúdez, is reportedly a seasoned Venezuelan pilot based in the United States with a home in Nebraska. Why is Maduro hiring expats? One guess is that U.S. sanctions that prevent Venezuela from buying airplane parts from the U.S. have basically made aviation a disaster in the country, and skilled pilots are few and far between. 

The cause of the crash is currently under investigation. Many sources blame the weather, saying it was too windy. Some say a tire burst. We may never know exactly — Venezuela's Instituto Nacional De Aeronáutica Civil (INAC) is investigating after all — but I look for Maduro to blame it on Marco Rubio before the week is over. 

Venezuela's state-run media is reportedly mostly silent on the plane crash, simply calling it a mechanical failure and not offering up any more details, so take everything I report here with that grain of salt. A lot of it is speculation, though it's based on history and facts.  

The plane was either going to or from Cuba, and as I mentioned, it's not the first time it's done so over the last few months; its most recent trip was actually just last week. It's also made stops in Cancun, Mexico and Panama — places Maduro's thugs go to do business and avoid U.S. sanctions. They aren't just taking weekly tropical getaways to Havana. 

As I wrote earlier this month, Venezuela and Cuba have something of a symbiotic relationship. Venezuela provides oil to Cuba, and Cuba returns the favor with services, ranging from sending doctors from its forced labor program to offering advisors for military and security assistance. For years, they've used this route to do business without U.S. intervention. 

Related: If Venezuela Falls, Do Cuba and Nicaragua Go With It?

According to several X posts I've seen today, like the one above, many people in the region believe that this plane has ties to Maduro's wife's narco-terrorist nephews, or the narcosobrinos, and claim it's reminiscent of their heyday, when they were trafficking drugs through various Caribbean hubs in a similar-style jet using the same routes. In 2015, Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas and Efrain Antonio Campo Flores were arrested in Haiti while attempting to smuggle large amounts of cocaine — reportedly about 800 kilograms — into the United States and extradited to New York to face drug trafficking charges. They were sentenced to 18 years in prison, but in 2022, Joe Biden turned these guys over to Maduro in exchange for seven American hostages — five Citgo oil executives, a U.S. Marine, and another private citizen. 

(Meanwhile, just a few months into his presidency, Donald Trump puts a $50 million reward on Maduro himself and enlists Nayib Bukele to negotiate bringing all of Venezuela's American hostages home without handing over any such criminals, but that's a story for another day.) 

Are the nephews back to their old ways? Could be. It could be that the Maduro regime was using the jet to do business with Cuba and run drugs internationally since our military is blowing up its boats. And, if it wasn't just the wind that caused the crash, it could be that our sanctions are now downing the regime's planes, too. But this is all just speculation. 

Whatever the case, the crash feels symbolic of what's been happening in Venezuela over the last few months. Maduro is rattled, the international walls are closing in on him, and his empire is falling apart both by land and by sea. 

The mainstream media seems reluctant to cover Maduro and his regime, and when they do, they treat him like he's any other world leader. At PJ Media, we won't do that. We recognize Maduro as a threat to our national security and humanity in general, and we'll call him out until he falls — I know I will. But we can only bring you stories like these with your help.

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