The incident comes as the airline faces administrative difficulties with Canadian authorities, against the backdrop of a growing number of civil aviation accidents in Haiti
A nine-seat aircraft operated by ZED Airlines, flying from Cap-Haïtien, made a « forced landing » in the sea near Port Lafito, David Jean Charles, a company official, told AyiboPost.
The two passengers and the pilot escaped the incident unharmed, he said.
« We are waiting for the pilot. They are already on their way. He will explain what happened. We cannot draw any conclusions at this point, » David Jean Charles said.
« The plane fell into the water, » an employee at the port confirmed to AyiboPost.
The accident is the latest in a series of aviation incidents that have occurred in Haiti in recent months.
Recently, a Sunrise Airways aircraft that was scheduled to land in Cap-Haïtien was instead diverted to Santo Domingo. « It was too late to land in Cap. The aircraft therefore landed in Santo Domingo, but there was no incident, » a company spokesperson told AyiboPost.
On Feb. 3, a Bolt Airlines aircraft registered N45SR crashed into a field in Les Cayes. All six people on board survived without injury. Haiti’s National Civil Aviation Office (OFNAC) announced an investigation into the destroyed aircraft, but has yet to make its findings public.
Two days later, an aircraft operated by the American missionary organization Agape Flights, an Embraer 110 Bandeirante registered N316AF, crashed in Jérémie. The two American pilots were killed in the accident.
A small aircraft operating the Port-au-Prince–Jacmel route crashed on April 20, 2022, on Route des Rails in the commune of Carrefour. Six people were killed in the crash.
The incident involving ZED Airlines comes as the airline is facing several administrative challenges.
On June 8, 54 passengers scheduled to board a flight to Canada, for which a round-trip ticket cost US$1,263, learned upon arriving at Cap-Haïtien International Airport that their departure had been canceled.
In an email sent to AyiboPost following the cancellation, Transport Canada, the federal agency responsible for regulating and overseeing aviation safety, revealed that ZED Airlines did not hold the valid Foreign Air Operator Certificate required under Part VII of the Canadian Aviation Regulations.
According to the same email, ZED Airlines also did not have an Air Operator Certificate (AOC) registered with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
The partners announced by ZED Airlines to operate the Montreal route — World Atlantic Airlines and Global X Air — also lacked the licenses required by the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), which are mandatory under Section 57 of the Canada Transportation Act, Transport Canada said.
« Because these mandatory legal requirements were not met, the airline was not authorized to operate this flight, » Hicham Ayoun, senior communications adviser at Transport Canada, previously told AyiboPost.
The airline had said that, together with its partners, it would meet Canadian regulatory requirements in order to begin operating flights to Montreal starting June 29. But no flights to Canada were operated on that date, and the airline did not offer tickets for the route for sale on its website.
The failure to comply with these requirements reflects dysfunction within Haiti’s National Civil Aviation Office (OFNAC), where political considerations and networks of influence often take precedence over technical requirements, according to two sources familiar with the institution’s internal operations.
According to those sources, the disorder is reflected in the issuance of temporary operating permits that allow certain airlines with political backing to operate without meeting all of the required technical and legal standards.
According to a technical document obtained by AyiboPost, ZED Airlines operates in Haiti under a « temporary » commercial license signed by OFNAC Director Hantz Célestin, whose validity period expired in May 2026. It is unclear whether that authorization has since been renewed.
Contacted by AyiboPost for this article, OFNAC had not responded by the time of publication.
A source familiar with the agency’s operations said authorities will first have to recover the wreckage of the ZED Airlines aircraft before they can determine the cause of the accident.
Launched in May 2026, the airline operates a fleet of about six aircraft connecting Port-au-Prince with Cap-Haïtien, as well as destinations in the United States and Brazil.
By : Widlore Mérancourt
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