Watch a Cuban pilot heading for Miami fly low over the waters of the Florida Keys

Before a Cuban defector piloted an aging Soviet-era biplane and landed on an isolated runway in the Everglades, it buzzed boats in the Florida Keys, flying just feet above the ocean, according to video recorded on a fisherman’s phone.

“I was confused by it,” said Brian Cone, a longtime Islamorada charter fishing captain. He was in the process of trying to hook a sailfish on the ocean side of Plantation Key when the plane approached.

“I thought, this is not a normal plane to be out here,” he said.

The single-engine Russian-built Antonov An-2 plane — likely used for crop-dusting in Cuba — touched down at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport off Tamiami Trail, about 50 miles west of Miami in the middle of the Everglades.

The pilot told U.S. authorities he was defecting from Cuba. He said he works for a Cuban state domestic flight charter company, and he flew the plane from Sancti Spiritus in Central Cuba — a roughly 270-mile, one-way trip.

Spain-based news outlet Cibercuba identified the pilot as Rubén Martínez.

The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the flight and the pilot, said agency spokesman Nestor Yglesias. It was not immediately clear Monday if the pilot is being detained or if he was released.

Yglesias referred questions about if the plane was being tracked at any time over the course of its journey to either the Federal Aviation Administration or Department of Defense.

Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Devin Robinson referred that question to either Homeland Security or the FAA. An FAA spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions about the flight.

The incident happened as the United States is in the midst of receiving the largest exodus of Cubans since the 1960s. Most of the roughly 200,000 people who have come to the States have entered through the southern border, but thousands have also arrived by sea to South Florida and the Keys in what has become the largest maritime migration from Cuba in nearly a decade.

U.S. Border Patrol agents have encountered more than 550 people from Cuba in the Keys since the the beginning of October. The Coast Guard has stopped another 921 people at sea along the Florida Straits. That exceeds the 838 Cubans the Coast Guard stopped at sea between Cuba and South Florida during an entire 12-month period from October 2020 through September 2021.

Miami Herald staff writers Chuck Rabin, Nora Gámez Torres and Doug Hanks contributed to this report.