"The visibility is very low, you can hardly see anything," air traffic controllers reported this Sunday around eleven o'clock at night. The low visibility forced the cancellation, recalculation, and delay of flights departing to Lanzarote. In some cases, the planes landed at César Manrique Airport with a two-hour delay. Others, however, had to be diverted and their passengers have not yet been able to reach the island.
The cloudiness had forced the diversion of routes to Lanzarote to Fuerteventura or Gran Canaria since the beginning of the afternoon. The last trips of the night turned into chaos and some of the people affected were seen sleeping on the floor at the airport of the capital island.
One of Iberia Express's planes traveling from Madrid to Lanzarote left its passengers in Gran Canaria, and travelers are denouncing the lack of solutions and information. Mercedes López is one of the mothers of the children of the Pingüinos Swimming Club of Arrecife. This weekend the team was in Oviedo (Asturias), competing in the Spanish Winter Junior and Senior Artistic Swimming Championship. Their return was scheduled for this Sunday, on a flight with a stopover in Madrid, but they were diverted to Gran Canaria.
In total, 33 people, including 23 children between the ages of eight and thirteen, ended up spending the night on the neighboring island. In the midst of the chaos, the team moved to a hotel in the capital, covering the costs of travel and without knowing whether they will have to pay for the hotel or not. There were no buses at twelve o'clock at night and they had to pay for a total of nine taxis to get to the capital.
Given the limited availability to fly to Lanzarote this Monday, Mercedes sees relocation as very difficult. At the moment they have no information about it and are considering taking a boat to return home. "The children are fine because they take it as another day of vacation, but some of the parents who are on the island waiting for them are overwhelmed by the uncertainty," says this mother.
"My parents are 80 years old, with blood pressure and sugar problems," says another of the passengers on one of the Iberia Express flights that departed from Madrid, but never arrived in Lanzarote. The parents of this passenger flew with just enough pills, the airport pharmacy does not administer them and the Aena emergency doctor does not prescribe medication by medical prescription.
In addition, her eight-year-old son has slept on the floor. The flight was scheduled to arrive in Lanzarote at eleven o'clock at night. "Aena provided a blanket to minors and the elderly, not Iberia Express," this passenger reproaches the company's neglect.
Last night's photograph was a nightmare for many passengers. Those who managed to get a spot slept in a chair and most on the floor. She is not the only one who denounces the lack of information from Iberia Express. The Tourism professor at the University of Las Palmas, Pedro Hernández Camacho, was traveling with 27 students back home. The students had spent the week at the International Tourism Fair (FIT) in Berlin.
His flight was scheduled to land in Lanzarote. However, the afternoon turned into confusion. "The most serious thing is that a ticket is a contract," the professor argues. Hernández insists on the lack of truthful information from the company, the contradictions of its operators and the inability to solve the problems that were arising. To top it off, passengers do not know where their suitcases are because they were not returned when they disembarked from the plane.
"We were not going to have accommodation and they gave us a voucher to eat something at the Burger King at the airport because it was the only thing that was open," says Pedro. Faced with the refusal to provide them with a place to sleep, a queue formed at the Iberia Express counter until almost two in the morning, at which point some passengers were moved to accommodation in the south of the island. Others went to relatives' homes, chose to pay for a hotel out of their own pockets or waited in the terminal.
A couple was traveling with their two children, eight and fourteen years old. "At about five in the morning they wake me up and tell me that I have to leave because the important people from Aena are coming," says a passenger. He had slept with his children in the seats of an airport cafeteria, pending the company providing him with an alternative to spend the night. They still do not know when they will be able to return to the island: "It is one in the afternoon, they have been laughing at us every 15 or 20 minutes telling us that we were going to leave and they still do not know," he laments.
This Monday morning, the program Buenos días, Lanzarote from Radio Lanzarote could not be broadcast. Among the hustle and bustle of the flights that could not land on the island, was its presenter Techy Acosta. "They didn't tell us what the reasons are," criticizes another passenger. The battle to return home continues for these travelers still stuck at Gran Canaria Airport. "Now they have scheduled a flight for two in the afternoon," says one of those affected.
