The information screens of Ibiza airport have been filled this Sunday with notices of cancellations and delays while passengers were nervous and uneasy everything that was happening on the airstrip of the aerodrome since 16.00 hours. The reason is that shortly before this time, a fire-fighting service aircraft suffered an incident when landing, leaving the runway and causing the blocking of air landing and take-off operations in the early afternoon.
While the airport manager Aena was working on the withdrawal of the aircraft in order to reactivate the service as soon as possible, the terminal was filled with nervous passengers who were waiting with uncertainty to receive direct information about their flights after the blockade of the runway. In this sense, according to Aena, 22 routes have been cancelled; 10 arrivals and 2 departures. In addition, 17 routes had to be diverted to other airports.
«Eight have been diverted to Palma, five to Barcelona and four to Valencia», they pointed out as the discomfort of the people waiting in the seats of the terminal increased, some even waited sitting on the floor. This is the case of the Majorcans Pedro, Marga, Ángel and Sara. They all looked forward to returning home after the incident.Very close to these passengers were Toni and Sebastian. Both also had to return to Palma at 1900 hours, but it was delayed by more than two hours due to the accident and the withdrawal of the plane. «Now they are calling the passengers of some of the cancelled flights and they are passing the control», said Toni noting that a friend of his had to wait inside the plane, since they had already boarded before the event, to have the service reactivated. The same thing happened to a relative of Hector and Norma.
Both said that when the Ibanat plane landed on the road parallel to the runway, his family was already on the plane bound for Madrid. They had to wait more than two hours inside. Many nerves have passed», explained this young man as hundreds of passengers queued infinitely slowly to climb the escalators that accessed the access control.
Meanwhile, the operators reported the next flights with a shout after 17.30, which is when the air traffic was restored after the withdrawal of the Air Tractor from Ibanat by the emergency services.
In addition, the diversion of several flights to alternative airports for safety also caused the air crew to be affected after the reactivation, since many workers did not know which route they had to cover because of the landing modifications.