Spain’s air travel is returning to normal

As the nation counts the cost of industrial action, air travel is getting back to normal.

Travel Insurance News - 06/12/2010

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Airports in Spain are slowly returning to normal operations on Sunday, following a walkout by the country’s air-traffic controllers. The industrial action left Spain’s tourism tarnished and PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero under heavy fire from critics.

Both conservative opposition and many angry Spaniards were questioning where the Prime Minister was as the crisis expanded over the weekend. Zapatero remained unseen as his more experienced deputy PM Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba took brutally decisive action to crush the strike. The Deputy PM also headed up press conferences during the crisis.

Despite Rubalcaba’s swift and effective action, the economic damage of the strike has been put at £300 million. On Sunday, airport operator Aena said airports were back to normal operations and airlines were trying to reduce their huge backlogs.

Burdget carriers Ryanair and easyJet both said their flights were operating as normal. Ryanair said it had an additional three flights going to the Canary Islands.

About 650,000 travellers were hit by the strike. This includes 20,000 passengers from the UK. The unauthorised strike began at 5pm on Friday. Most travellers left stranded were Spaniards who had planned holidays for the extended weekend.

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