Travel
Stranded: Storm chaos on Mallorca torments holidaymakers
Storms have caused chaos at Mallorca airport (archive photo). Photo
© Clara Margais/dpa
Nightmare night instead of Mallorca: Due to a severe storm over the island, the start of many holidays was canceled. The situation at the airport is slowly returning to normal – but the shaking continues.
After Tuesday’s storm chaos, Palma Airport is returning to Mallorca is slowly returning to normality – but for many holidaymakers the trouble is far from over.
This included a group from Germany whose flight to Barcelona had been diverted the day before. They had received neither food nor hotel accommodation from the travel agent, complained a holidaymaker from Bad Honnef in an interview with the German Press Agency. As a result, they had to spend the night at the airport. “Six backpacks were stolen from our group. I’m now really afraid to get up and let the bags out of my sight for even a moment,” complained the man from the Rhineland. The situation is unbearable.
The Germans, some of whom were planning to take a cruise in Palma and were hoping for a flight to the island in the afternoon amidst scant information, were not the only ones stranded. The Mallorcan regional media carried numerous reports from people affected in various countries. There was no official information on the number of people affected, but the media spoke of “thousands”. One small consolation was that there were only a few delays at Son Sant Joan Airport today, as a spokeswoman for the airport said when asked.
Water masses at the airport
Even though the weather remained changeable for the time being, a repeat of the events of the previous day – when the airport was completely paralyzed by the floodwaters for over an hour and it even rained through the roof in the duty-free shop – was not to be expected. After some rain in the early morning, it was dry in the afternoon.
The forecast for Palma by the Spanish weather service Aemet was: “Cloudy skies with precipitation, with a low probability of local heavy rain.” But the trembling for passengers and employees is not over yet. For the south and southwest of the Germans’ favorite holiday island – and thus also for Palma and the so-called Ballermann – the third highest warning level, yellow, was still in effect until 8 p.m. Due to the uncertain weather conditions, passengers were advised to find out about possible flight changes in good time – either from the respective airline or on the portal of the airport administration authority Aena.
Take-offs and landings temporarily suspended
On Tuesday afternoon, all take-offs and landings were temporarily suspended after heavy rain turned the runways into raging torrents within minutes. Several incoming flights had to be diverted to Barcelona and Ibiza, among other places, and dozens were cancelled. The storm not only disrupted flight operations, it also caused chaos at and in the airport.
The access roads, the parking lots and parts of the terminal, including the duty-free shop and other stores, were partially under water, as media reported and could be seen on videos. In some shops, rain partially came through the ceiling. The duty-free shop therefore remained closed on Wednesday. According to media reports, there was also some flooding on Playa de Palma.
After the chaos and excitement had died down, the first reports came in. “My wife, my father and my brother (…) were locked in the parking garage for three and a half hours,” Santiago Sánchez, for example, told the regional newspaper “Diario de Mallorca”. The family wanted to pick him up, who had come from Madrid.
Waiting for hours in the planes
Passengers often had to wait for hours in the planes that had arrived and were ready to take off. Meanwhile, hundreds of people wandered aimlessly around the partially flooded terminal, and the queues at the taxi stands grew longer and longer. But for some there was also reason to be happy. A video shows an airport employee wearing a safety vest splashing around in knee-deep water like a child outside in front of a row of gangways.
While it remained dry in many parts of Mallorca on Tuesday, in Palma, according to the weather service Aemet, more than 43 litres of water per square metre fell from the sky within a single hour in the afternoon – that’s around a tenth of the amount of rain that Palma normally records in an entire year. From Thursday, however, it is expected to be sunny again and remain dry.