KEY WEST, Fla. (REUTERS) — A pilot for Cuba’s national airline packed seven relatives into a state-owned plane and flew to Florida, where the group sought asylum after U.S. fighter jets ordered them to land Monday, investigators said.

The pilot was a Cubana Airlines employee who had access to the Soviet-made Antonov-2 Colt plane owned by the Cuban government, U.S. Transportation Security Administration spokesman Brian Turmail said.

“It is a defection,” Turmail said.

The yellow biplane took off from Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, and U.S. authorities alerted the military as it entered American airspace off the Florida Keys, he said.

“Fighters were scrambled and directed it to land at Key West International Airport,” Turmail said.

The plane landed at the airport in Key West, some 90 miles north of Havana, without further incident, he said. Seven adults and one child were aboard the plane and were turned over to immigration authorities, Turmail said.

All the passengers were immediate relatives of the pilot, he said.

According to Turmail, Navy dogs searched the plane and found no explosives or contraband. The plane was still sitting in Key West.

“I assume it would eventually be returned to the Cuban government,” Turmail said.

Peter Horton, the director of the airport, said the plane was configured to carry cargo and had only three fold-down seats outside the cockpit, not enough to seat all the passengers.

“We got a call from TSA about two minutes before it landed, saying to expect it, and by the time we got [to the airstrip] it was here,” Horton said.

The TSA was set up to oversee aviation security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Horton said its handling of the incident was “very professional, very businesslike.”

Under U.S. law, Cubans fleeing their communist homeland are generally allowed to stay in the United States.

Over the years, there have been several incidents involving planes and boats stolen or hijacked by Cubans to make the trip across the Florida Straits.

In September 2000, a stolen crop-duster crashed into the Gulf of Mexico after leaving from western Cuba. Nine survivors were rescued by a passing freighter and taken to Florida.

In contrast, Haitians fleeing their troubled Caribbean homeland are routinely returned.

U.S. authorities have begun shipping home members of a group of some 200 Haitians who landed in Miami when their boat grounded just off a beach Oct. 29. That incident sparked protests in Miami by Haitians angry over what they see as unequal treatment.