The cancellation of flights to Venezuela continues to affect a large number of passengers who headed to Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport on Monday hoping to depart for Caracas, but remained unresolved four days later. Workers at facilities contacted by this newspaper confirmed that about fifty people were still in this condition on Friday morning, but had been transferred to Avianca and Air Europa flights bound for Medellin and Bogotá. During the afternoon, about ten travelers remained in Barajas without any solution and without the possibility of spending the night there. At the end of the day, ENNA announced that the Red Cross had offered a housing solution, until next Monday, for those affected who were still in Barajas.
This newspaper was able to confirm this with passengers who felt relieved and grateful to have a place to spend the next few nights. Regarding transfers to resume their journey, they reported that the number of people transferred was much lower than specified and criticized the lack of alternatives and information on the part of Estelar.
Jose Enrique Garcia, 37, was scheduled to fly to Caracas on Monday on a flight operated by the Venezuelan airline. Since then, they have been demanding a solution that has not arrived and point to the lack of communication on Estelar’s part. A situation that, by the way, even affects their health. “After many days of sleeping on the ground and being cold, I have a fever,” he explains with concern.
It is reported that only thirty of the 350 passengers who had a ticket for Monday were transported with Estelar, in addition to recalling that the airline also had to cancel flights scheduled for last Wednesday and this Friday. “This morning, they installed an improvised window and put about 30 of us on an Air Europa plane bound for Medellin, but they didn’t give us any response,” García explains.
He denounces that the airline did this in a “surreptitious” way without any prior notice and that there were no clear criteria for transporting some passengers or others: “They left us stranded again without any kind of notification or anything, it is very unfair.”
Cancellations of flights between Madrid and Caracas began to appear last Saturday after Iberia reported the freeze in service, in accordance with recommendations issued by the US Federal Civil Aviation Authority (FAA). They warned of the high risk of flying over the area and caused the Spanish airline to leave its planes on the ground since Monday. The decision was not well received in Caracas, which accused the companies of “joining the acts of state terrorism promoted by the United States government, and unilaterally suspending commercial air operations to and from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”
For this reason, the government of Nicolas Maduro, on Wednesday night, canceled the air traffic rights of Iberia, TAP, Avianca, LATAM Colombia, Turkish Airlines and GOL. But the decision did not affect other companies, such as Air Europa or Plus Ultra, as they canceled their flights one day later, last Tuesday, following advice provided by the Spanish Aviation Safety Agency (Aesa). This is a simple difference that was fundamental to the Venezuelan regime’s decision.