The busy airport’s flood emergency plan on the Balearic Islands has been put in place to help alleviate the chaos with all flights in and out ‘due to the impossibility of operating safely’
Flood emergency hits Mallorca Airport grounding flights temporarily
Mallorca’s Palma Airport is practically paralyed following a strong and sudden storm on Tuesday afternoon.
Planes were unable to take-off or land causing flights to divert to nearby airports on the Spanish mainland as officials activated the airport’s flood emergency plan to try and stem the chaos. Flights into Mallorca’s Airport were being diverted due to a torrential downpour which has flooded the airport, runway and car parks, and grounding flights waiting to take off.
In several videos broadcast by airport workers and passengers, strong waterfalls of water can be seen inside the terminal building, including security control and check-in counters. Rain could be seen gushing through the ceiling in the Duty Free store which was left completely flooded and abandoned.
And water reached knee high in the parking lot and became so flooded in parts that a couple of cars could be seen floating around following the sudden storm which hit the island around 2pm. Airport logistics firm Aena has reported that all flights are currently paralyzed “due to the impossibility of operating safely.” The runway was completely flooded, making normal operation and operation impossible. Flights have been diverted to nearby airports on the mainland of Spain and Ibiza and passengers advised to check the status of their flight.
Aena has reported that there are currently no take-offs or landings in Mallorca’s busy airport. Access to the facilities is chaos and the screens with the flight information show endless delays and cancellations. While a spokesperson for Aena was reported as saying: “the airport has activated the flood emergency plan and is working as quickly as possible to re-establish normality.”
According to the Spain’s weather forecaster AEMET it’s claimed that 45 litres of rain had fallen in one hour with peaks of up to 90 litres, which has caused flooding both in some entrances to the airport and in the terminal building.”
Despite the flights being grounded passengers were still being checked-in. “The computer systems work”, said a check-in flight attendant at Air Europa. “We check in the passengers and tell them to go to the boarding gates. We can’t do anything else,” he explained.
