• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 11 / 07 / 2010

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Sunday, November 07, 2010 » 11:39pm. Live 1930 AEDT: Victoria's Brumby v Baillieu.  Two Australian women among 68 people killed in a Cuba plane crash were reportedly long-time friends who regularly travelled together.

Sydney lawyer Barbara Crossin, 49, and her friend Jacqueline Cunningham, 47, from Brisbane, were killed in Cuba's worst plane crash in two decades, according to News Limited newspapers.

Ms Crossin's father, David Crossin, told the newspaper the women had been friends for more than 20 years, after working together as nurses.

Her Canberra-based brother Carl said Ms Crossin loved to travel.'She was warm, intelligent and very loving, had a quirky sense of humour and we devastated by this and will miss her terribly,' he told ABC Radio.

The women left Australia on October 11 and had been holidaying in Chile and Mexico before travelling to Cuba, where they took the fatal domestic flight.

The Austrian Embassy said the Australians were initially mistakenly reported to be Austrians, and Buenos Aires said an Italian who was killed was in fact an Argentine citizen.

The passenger list included eight Europeans, nine Argentines, seven Mexicans, a Venezuelan and a Japanese national, state media reported.

The plane crashed 400km east of Havana in the mountainous Sancti Spiritus region on Thursday, after taking off from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba in dangerous weather conditions.

The victims' remains and the black box flight recorders have been recovered.

Source: http://bigpondnews.com/articles/National/2010/11/07/Cuba_crash_Aussie_wo...