Thousands of passengers had their flights diverted and delayed after a private jet blocked the runway at the main airport in Tenerife.
The plane landed at Reina Sofía airport in the south of the island around 5.45pm on Thursday (2 January). It suffered a technical fault that left it immobilised on the runway. Airport staff took several hours to tow the plane, during which 20 incoming flights were diverted – 13 of them from the UK.
The relatively fortunate passengers – from Birmingham and Manchester on Ryanair and from Norwich on Tui, ended up at Tenerife North airport – an hour away by road from the main southern airport.
The rest were spread between Las Palmas, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, flying on to their intended destination once the runway at Tenerife reopened.
Those incoming flights were due to become outgoing flights, taking holidaymakers home from Canary Islands holidays. So there were long delays resulting in some crews going “out of hours”.
The first diversion was easyJet flight 3201A from Edinburgh to Las Palmas, which departed Scotland 80 minutes late. Had it been on time, the Airbus jet would have landed ahead of the closure. As it was, the passengers flew to Las Palmas, waited around for a couple of hours and finally reached Tenerife four hours late.
The crew could only make it as far as Madrid before going “out of hours”. The flight will operate back from the Spanish capital to Scotland on Friday evening, 24 hours late.
A spokesperson for easyJet said: “Following the temporary runway closure of Tenerife airport, easyJet, like all airlines, experienced some disruption to its operations to and from Tenerife.
“We are making every effort to get customers to their destination and any customers whose flights are disrupted due to the impact of the runway closure are being notified and provided with options to rebook or receive a refund as well as hotel accommodation and meals where needed.”
Separately, British Airways passengers from Mauritius to London Gatwick finally arrived back in the UK late on Thursday night – 16 hours behind schedule, following a technical fault on the Boeing 777 aircraft.
