The air traffic controllers' strike turned Lanzarote Airport into the second with the most delays in Europe this past Sunday. According to the ANS Performance website, the César Manrique aerodrome accumulated 2,402 minutes of delays on November 5 alone.
During this Sunday, dozens of routes were affected by the lack of an agreement between the air traffic controllers, who are carrying out a claim to sign a new labor agreement to achieve a salary in accordance with their responsibility, and Saerco, the company that has privatized the control tower of Lanzarote.
Likewise, European airports reached 11,678 minutes of delays during this past Sunday due to the air traffic controllers' strike. As of this Monday, the continent's aerodromes are suffering 6,556 minutes of delays, as reflected on the Eurocontrol website.
For their part, Saerco sources point out that "the USCA union is causing citizens to suffer delays that they should not suffer. We are in the middle of a collective negotiation, we have a willingness to dialogue and even a mediation has been created. We do not understand what the union intends with a strike at this point. This is something that only harms users."
In the case of Lanzarote, national and international flights suffered delays of 20 to 40 minutes each in most cases. With the exception of a route to Malaga airport with the airline Vueling, which was scheduled to depart at 1:25 p.m. and boarding ended up taking place after 3:20 p.m.
"I am writing to you from a plane in which we have been sitting and stopped on the runway of Tenerife North Airport for half an hour due to the controllers' strike that they say is in Lanzarote," a reader writes to La Voz. The passenger was traveling on a Canaryfly airline plane, her first time with the company, and managed to board the flight after two changes in the schedule, which was initially scheduled for 6:00 p.m.
In this line, the passenger points out that the pilot informed them that they did not have authorization to fly and that they could not leave until 9:50 p.m. "I don't know how to express this situation, but it seems like a small kidnapping of trapped passengers without a way out," the citizen denounces. According to her testimony, the pilot explained to them that he requested Aena to disembark the crew, but that they had responded that there was no personnel to carry out that disembarkation.
"Fan in hand and a lot of patience in the backpack," the woman laments. In one of the interventions, the pilot concluded: "It seems unheard of to me, it is a matter for the courts what happens with control, with billing and with boarding at this Tenerife Airport."
