Romania's TAROM national airline on Monday managed to take off with its passengers from Madrid's Barajas Airport affected by a blackout.
"Today, a large part of Spain and Portugal was affected by major power outages. Aviation seems to be one of the sectors affected by power outages, as happened at Madrid's Barajas airport, which was left without electricity. TAROM with two flights scheduled today at this airport manages to protect its passengers," reads a TAROM press statement.
TAROM flight RO 415 landed according to plan in Barajas in the middle of the power outage, and the company's ground operations team, in strict contact with the handling agent of South Europe and the local supervision company, AeroJetWay, managed to board the passengers for the return flight to Bucharest - RO 416, with help from the airport staff who teamed up with the Romanians and the few other flights that had already checked in, bringing the backup generators that allowed the doors to open for boarding access.
Moreover, the airport quickly gave the green light for the flight - in the general congestion of blocked traffic, the flights were waiting for the designated slots - provided that the flight crew managed to make the taxiing push (take-off) in a maximum of 7 minutes.
"The situation in Barajas, Madrid, continues to be a crisis, with the latest news indicating that the baggage lanes have given way. The TAROM crew, together with the teams from Barajas have achieved the incredible, and RO 416 is on its way home, with all 150 passengers on board and only an hour late - the time needed to call the generators, boarding buses and carry out the centralised load control - the plane's loading sheet and the passenger list," according to the airline.
TAROM quotes news agencies as reporting that other airports have been blocked, with all flights from Valencia being postponed. Aena, which manages Spain's largest airports and heliports, said in a social media post that "Airports of the Aena network are operational with backup electrical systems. The impact on flights will depend on the difficulties passengers and crews face when arriving to the airports. Some flights are being delayed. Please check your flight status with your airline."
On April 28, 3,005 flights were scheduled in Spain, with 520,777 passengers, and 709 flights in Portugal, with 122,870. Many of them are still cancelled or are experiencing long delays.
"This is one of the moments when only the teams of professionals, the good and traditional TAROM collaboration in Europe with all those involved in the flights, but also the qualified flight crew manage to save the situation amidst an extremely serious event for all of us", Cristian Anghel, TAROM director of ground operations, is quoted as saying in the statement.
TAROM was established in 1954 and operates under the authority of the Ministry of Transport, being a member of the SkyTeam Alliance since June 25, 2010. Romania's national airline has a fleet of 14 aircraft, servicing over 50 destinations operated with its own aircraft or by code share partners. In 1993, TAROM became a member of the International Air Carriers Association (IATA).
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