A Spanair flight from Barcelona to Lanzarote was forced to land in Málaga yesterday after the captain reported a technical fault.
One hour into the flight, the captain of flight JK 2526 reported a technical fault and decided to land in Málaga. Although the fault was described as ‘minor’, the captain decided to err on the side of caution in view of the recent disaster at Madrid’s Barajas airport which involved a similar aircraft, the MD-82.
The passengers disembarked and waited about an hour and a half in the terminal building before being informed that it would not be possible for them to continue their journey to Lanzarote until the next day and that they would be given overnight accommodation in Málaga. The reason for not being able to continue was that the crew had already completed one flight and, because of the delay, had already fulfilled their work schedule.
However, Spanair is not the healthiest of companies at the moment and many lay-offs are expected in the near future, a situtation which has led some to the theory that the decision not to continue the journey to Lanzarote was more a question of workers seizing an opportunity to irritate the company.
One can imagine that the atmosphere on board the plane was rather tense after the crew announced the ‘technical fault’ and there was apparently total silence as it came in to land at Málaga and was followed by spontaneous applause as it landed safely.