About 200 people had to spend the night from Sunday to Monday at the Lanzarote airport when their flights were canceled as a result of the storm and no accommodation was found for them, as confirmed to La Voz by the CEO of SPEL, Héctor Fernández.
As Fernández explained, of the 27 flights that, according to Aena, had to be diverted due to wind and low visibility, "a good part" returned to Lanzarote "when conditions began to improve in the afternoon." However, "many of the crews had exceeded the permitted flight hours," which prevented the planes from taking off again from the island to their destinations, forcing passengers to spend the night in Lanzarote.
"Since noon, a coordination device was launched between Aena, Asolan, the airport's handling companies and Turismo Lanzarote to get accommodation for the passengers of the companies that could not take off," said Héctor Fernández, pointing out that "everyone was accommodated except 70 rooms that were not obtained." In total, "about 200 people" who, according to Fernández, spent the night at the airport, which Aena left open "activating the device it has for these cases." "They enable an area, open the restaurants and so on and I don't know if they have blankets and so on for the passengers," he detailed.
"They were a minority"
The CEO of SPEL has stated that "they were a minority" of passengers who had to sleep at the airport, although he has not provided figures for those who did manage to get accommodation, limiting himself to pointing out that there were "many more fortunately." The exact number of flights that could not take off from Lanzarote is also unknown, as this data has not been provided either from Turismo or from Aena, from where they have simply given figures for the planes that had to be diverted
Héctor Fernández has nevertheless underlined the "enormous effort that was made," highlighting that "the impact was minimized." "Because the situation ended up getting quite complicated. There were airports that closed, such as Tenerife South. Ours did not close, but due to the circumstances of the crew's hours, this problem occurred," said the CEO of SPEL, pointing out that already on the morning of this Monday, the flights that had had to be canceled in Lanzarote, had begun to depart.
