Intense afternoon, night and early morning in Spanish airspace and several airports in the Aena network due to the infrequent snowstorm that has affected the airport with the highest air traffic: Barajas. While the people of Madrid mostly enjoyed the streets, squares, parks and snowy landscapes, at the airport the 100% winter plan was put into operation, prepared since the beginning of last month in the 20 airports in the network with the greatest possibility of suffering contingencies. by snow and ice. As every year, the airport named in 2014 remembering Adolfo Suarez, was within that group.
Even with the sharp drop in air traffic in general, the day was intense in Madrid: specialized ground services were used to the full to defrost the most sensitive parts of the planes before taking off, an operation that takes place when the cold is extreme. Whether there is snow or not, avoiding icing on the wings, rudder and other sensitive areas. In turn, the fleet dedicated to clearing snow from the slopes and preventing the formation of ice on these surfaces worked non-stop.
With the snowfall of 2009 in mind, the last one that notably affected air traffic in Madrid, runways, taxiways and aircraft parking lots were cleared. Initially with success, although the intensity of the snowfall and the special care taken in these circumstances, in which all movements on the ground slow down, the general operations began to be delayed.
Delays and Real Madrid
The heavy snowfall in the afternoon intensified the work of the ground teams, who carried out up to five passes in each area to make the airplanes completely clean, although after a few minutes they went back from black or gray to white. The incidents in the accesses to the airport also affected the normal operation of the aviation, with passengers who did not arrive for their flight and what is more important, employees and crews of some aircraft that could not be completed because they could not reach Barajas by land . Iberia, for example, sent all its flight employees an email requesting volunteers to be on alert in the event that their presence at the airport was necessary both last night and throughout the weekend, recommending, yes, that They arrived at T4 by metro, the only system that could guarantee their schedules to get to the terminal.
At dawn, the Aena communication department carried out an account of the situation in Barajas: of the 365 take-offs and landings scheduled yesterday, 312 were completed with different levels of punctuality: from which they did not have any news when going perfectly in hour to important delays, as was the case of the Iberia flight that took Real Madrid yesterday afternoon to Noain, Pamplona, to play their game against Osasuna this Saturday night.
The Iberia A319 chartered by Zidane’s team was delayed for four hours and then completed its flight in just 37 minutes. Madrid’s flight is the one that received the most attention due to the eternal magnet and repercussion that soccer always drags, although passengers, crews and service personnel of several flights later than Friday afternoon also had to deal with the delays caused by the snow and its domino effect.
Cancellations and diversions
The difference between the 365 scheduled flights and the 312 operated was in the definitive cancellation of 27 departures and the diversion of 26 arrivals to different Spanish airports. After waiting at different points on the peninsula or southern France and given the difficulty of being able to handle all air traffic in limited facilities, Enaire controllers began to order detours in coordination with the flight crews, control and target towers. Enaire, manager of the two million square kilometers of Spanish airspace and 21 control towers, lived again yesterday one of those intense days reminiscent of the pre-covid stage. Part of the 26 flights that had planned to land in Barajas from European capitals, ended up landing mainly in Barcelona, Valencia and Palma, because for safety reasons Aena decided to permanently paralyze operations last night at 10 p.m., informing Enaire to act accordingly. with all arrivals.
Barcelona practicing Madrid
The forecasts of not reopening until 10 am on Saturday also affected, already at dawn, all the intercontinental planes that were already in flight from different cities in America to land in Barajas before dawn or early in the morning.
From Flightradar, a reference website that closely monitors all commercial flights on the planet, it has been possible to follow throughout the night the drip of diversions of aircraft from North America, the Caribbean, Central and South America, passing by Barajas to follow their I fly a few more minutes to Barcelona. The exceptionality of the situation caused an unofficial twitter account, although with proven solvency, @a Aeropuerto_BCN, to be collecting throughout part of yesterday and this morning all the detours heading to El Prat, reporting on affected routes, companies and airplane models.
Thus, during this morning, what the pilots write down as extra data in their flight plans was fulfilled: which are alternative airports in the event that they cannot land at the intended destination. In the case of large intercontinental airplanes, Barcelona, Malaga, Seville or Valencia are usually indicated preventively, although it rarely happens, although this morning has passed.
Apart from the different flights from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands or the United Kingdom that ended up in El Prat last night, four Air Europa Boeing 787s from Cancun, Panama, Salvador de Bahía and Havana have landed on runway 02 in Barcelona. Another Avianca Boeing 787 also landed on the same runway, in this case from Bogotá, and an Iberia Airbus A330, flying between the capital of El Salvador and Madrid, also ended up in Barcelona, coinciding with another long-haul plane from the company, an A350, which in this case had been diverted from London.
Complications, although minor
The lower intensity of air traffic, which has been dragging on by the pandemic, has prevented the problems of the impact by snow in Madrid from being more complicated and instead of several hundred passengers, thousands were affected in Barcelona, an airport where these Passengers arriving outside the program have coincided with the first travelers if scheduled for the day, such as those who have arrived from Doha with Qatar Airways, those who departed for Santiago de Compostela with Ryanair, Paris with Air France or Bilbao and Malaga with Vueling, departures that have operated with total normality and punctuality, all from T1 in El Prat, as T2 remains closed due to lack of sufficient number of passengers to justify the use of the two terminals.
Last night Barajas was scheduled to reopen at 10 in the morning, although finally Aena decided that the airport should remain closed all this Saturday. Thus, the flights that were already on their way to Madrid will have to be diverted to the alternative ones and those that have not yet taken off will be canceled. This second Saturday of the year will be a long day for some passengers, crew and other employees of airlines and the airport in their attempt to redirect a situation with which Filomena and the snow have released the first days of 2021, fully affecting transport air that has been touched for months.
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