Airport chaos continues in Lanzarote

66 Ryanair passengers travelling to Knock Airport in Ireland were forced to miss their flight last month due to shortages of border control staff at César Manrique Airport.

It was the second time that Ryanair passengers were left grounded in recent weeks, following an incident when 38 passengers were barred from boarding a flight to Stansted Airport on July 31st.

Daniel Leonard, a passenger on that flight, used priority tickets to board the plane with his son but was forced to disembark again after being informed that his wife and daughter, who had planned to meet them on the plane, had been refused entry after the boarding gate was closed while several passengers waited in the queue.

Daniel says that no explanation was given for his removal, and he had been “deeply concerned about my wife and daughter’s well-being”. His nine-year-old daughter suffered an anxiety attack at the airport and was distressed when they returned for a replacement flight the next day.

In both cases, left-behind passengers have had to pay for later flights, arrange emergency accommodation at local hotels and alter their schedules on arrival. They have been encouraged to keep all receipts and apply for compensation.

Ryanair have defended their actions on both occasions by saying that “If the passengers had presented themselves at the boarding gate before it was closed, they would have been admitted onto the flight.” This, however, is disputed by passengers who claim they joined the queue when the gate was opened and were still refused entry.

Delays caused by the shortage of border officials at Lanzarote’s César Manrique Airport have been highly damaging to Lanzarote’s reputation this summer but have normally been limited to long queues on arrival, with many hundreds of passengers waiting to have their passports stamped in an area with no refreshments.

However, Ryanair is the only airline that is reported to have left passengers behind on departure. Allegations that the Irish airline is using the situation to highlight the absence of staffing at Lanzarote at passengers’ expense cannot be confirmed, but Daniel Leonard points out that the Stansted flight was delayed by an extra hour in order to remove the hold luggage of the 38 excluded passengers “How strange is it that Ryanair were happy to delay the flight at this point rather than the 10 minutes needed to board the remaining passengers?” he comments.

No official solution has yet been provided for the absence of passport staff at Lanzarote. No similar delays have been reported at other Canarian airports, and the situation has largely been publicised by Lanzarote border staff themselves.