Hurricane Leslie on October 13th, 2018 made its way to the Iberic Peninsula that caused heavy disruption of the air traffic at the Porto Airport. The storm resulted in six aircraft of the Ryanair to be diverted towards Malaga airport. Due to this about 800 passengers and crew members were left stranded for the night at the airport.
Sunday mornings, police officers came to the airport to calm down the 800 passengers who were stranded to spend a night on the airport without information for about 5 to 6 hours.
One of the passengers told the Portuguese newspaper in a complaining way, “If they were aware of the fact that a storm was coming, they should have not let us departed in the first place. They have put our safety at risk. Our flights were to land in Potro at about 22:30 but we were diverted to Faro and now we are stranded in Malaga at 2:20. We were not given any information until morning.”
When the help desk of Ryanair opened in the morning, all hell broke loose. The scene was a riot, people were screaming and shouting. Some passengers even tried to stop the flight of Ryanair. The situation was calmed down by asking police intervention.”
Ryanair, in the end, operated two flights from Potro. Preferences were given to pregnant women, families and elderly. By the end of Sunday, Ryanair was able to bring all the passengers back to Potro with some extra flights.
Ryanair’s operative did not provide any accommodations for the crew members stranded at Malaga. The excuse was that all the hotels in Malaga were completely booked. However around 400 hotels surrounding the airport were all half empty at that night as per media sources.
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