The storm forces 37 flights to be diverted at Malaga Airport.
The crosswind even closed the runways for landing for two hours and the planes were distributed among the main Spanish aerodromes. In the province, CPB firefighters carried out around twenty operations in just three hours.
The afternoon was very complicated at Malaga airport, where most of the scheduled flights had to leave for alternative flights due to the strength of the windstorm that is sweeping through the province, with crosswinds and lateral gusts of up to 50 knots.
For two hours, the situation became so difficult that it was necessary to close the runways for arrivals (known in the jargon as ‘rate 0’). In this interval, no aircraft were able to land in the Malaga capital, which meant that 37 flights had to be diverted, according to sources in the control tower. The destinations were Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Granada, Almeria, Alicante, Valencia and Jerez.
At 21.30 the restrictions were lifted, but then the situation moved to the terminal, where thousands of passengers were waiting for their delayed flights (because several planes that had not yet been able to come had a last rotation pending), according to airport sources. As a result, many travellers have been forced to spend the night in hotels in Malaga and on the coast, waiting to travel tomorrow.
Incidents in the province
Members of the Provincial Consortium of Firefighters (CPB) of the Provincial Council have carried out twenty actions from 17.00 to 20.20 hours on Thursday due to the strong wind that is sweeping through the province of Malaga.