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21ST - 27TH JANUARY 2020 - EDITION 822
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Further closure at Alicante Airport causes more delay misery
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Alicante Airport was closed once again from 1pm Sunday afternoon until 1pm yesterday afternoon causing more passenger misery. The closure decision was made by bosses after severe weather warnings were issued across the region as storm Gloria began to inch closer to the Southern Costa Blanca. It was feared that debris left behind by Wednesday’s fire would be caught in the predicted red alert force gale winds and make landings and take offs too dangerous to risk. AENA urged passengers to check with their airlines regarding the closure and not to head to the airport. This is the second serious disruption to affect Alicante Airport in a short space of time as the airport experienced an unexpected closure on Wednesday after a fire broke out in one of its offices in the terminal building and quickly spread to the roof. Thousands of passengers were affected as flight disruption spread over two days with many being transferred by
bus to neighbouring Murcia International Airport (Corvera) and even to the International Airport at Valencia more than 170km away. Dozens of departures were cancelled after the last flight, Ryanair to Dublin, took off at 4.05pm on Wednesday. That evening Ryanair cancelled flights to East Midlands, Gatwick and Leeds Bradford, while easyJet grounded Gatwick and Liverpool departures. On Thursday, Ryanair has cancelled a dozen flights between UK airports and Alicante, with round-trips from Edinburgh, Gatwick, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Stansted grounded. An estimated 2,000 passengers are affected on these flights alone. The Costa Blanca airport is the fifth-busiest in Spain. Last year, 15 million
passengers passed through the airport – with many of them from the UK. As of 2 pm on Thursday the airport began to regain normality in its flight operations, although during the day around 64 flights had to be diverted to the Murcia Region International Airport and another 16 flights to Valencia Airport . By mid-afternoon, the Alicante facilities had already been able to manage 35 flights on their own. By Friday all flight appeared to be operating normally with 189 scheduled flights at Alicante-Elche Airport.
SEE PAGE 18