El Hierro Airport: plane unable to land due to lack of controllers, passengers stranded
The senator from El Hierro is sounding the alarm about problems at the airport, where only the AFIS system is operational on weekends, leading to flight cancellations and inconvenience for passengers.
Javier Armas, a senator from the island of El Hierro, is raising the alarm: the lack of a control tower at the local airport is causing problems again. The fact is that only the AFIS system operates there on weekends. It can only inform pilots, but not give them instructions.
Recently, a plane from Gran Canaria was unable to land on El Hierro due to poor visibility and had to turn back. The pilots had to maneuver for a long time, fly around the island, but all in vain.
"If the control tower was operating, as it does on weekdays, the pilots would have had a better chance of landing the plane safely. As it is, with AFIS, El Hierro turns into a ghost airport when the weather gets worse," says the Independent Association of El Hierro (AHI).
As a result, dozens of passengers were stranded in Gran Canaria, where they had to spend the night. In the morning, they were first sent to Tenerife, and then to El Hierro. Of course, this caused a lot of inconvenience and losses.
Javier Armas, the head of AHI, emphasizes: "We, the residents of El Hierro, are not second-class citizens! We need a safe airport with air traffic controllers, not an AFIS system that cuts us off from the world every weekend."
They demand that a full-fledged air traffic control service operate at El Hierro airport instead of AFIS. This is a matter of equality, safety and dignity, and they are waiting for an immediate response from the state and AENA.