For the second time in just a year, passengers on a commercial plane from Casablanca bound for Istanbul have taken advantage of an emergency stop in Spain to escape from the plane.
The latest episode took place last morning, at the El Prat airport (Barcelona), when 28 people ran out of the facilities after a pregnant woman pretended, according to the police, that she was in labor.
The agents are looking for 12 people, another 5 were admitted back on the aircraft, and the rest, intercepted at the airport, have begun a process of non-admission into Spanish territory and return.
During the afternoon of this Wednesday, the Mossos have arrested one of the people who have run out of the airport and the Civil Guard another, inside the airport facilities.
The episode began at half past four in the morning, when the commercial plane of the Pegasus line from Casablanca, with 228 passengers on board, reported an emergency landing because a woman had broken her water.
At that time, a supposedly improved protocol was applied after a similar leak occurred in Palma de Mallorca in November last year due to a suspected diabetic coma of a passenger.
In both the case of Palma and Barcelona, one of the keys is the plane's stairs, through which the passengers escaped.
Once the alarm was raised, an ambulance, two Civil Guard patrols and one National Police patrol went to the aircraft: a total of six agents.
To lower the woman from the plane, an ambulift
was connected to the right side of the rear of the aircraft .
a lifting vehicle to take the patient out on a stretcher, and on the other side, the stairs were maintained through which the toilets and the police were supposed to access.
Most of the people on the plane fled through these stairs, according to police sources and eyewitnesses.
From Aena, they assure that it is the agreed operation, and that the ladders cannot be removed until the intervention in the ship has finished.
Police sources, however, criticize that a single access was not removed and maintained, and that once again that was the place through which part of the passage ran.
The woman, about five months pregnant, was referred to the Sant Joan hospital in Barcelona, where the medical teams attended her and verified that she was not in labor.
For this reason, once she was discharged, she was arrested for a crime of public disorder, accused of pretending that she was about to give birth, and she is still in Spain, in the airport premises.
The Government Delegation in Catalonia assures that all the information on the incident is being analyzed and collected, and that it is still early to be able to draw conclusions about what happened in a critical infrastructure in the country.
At the same time, the police are still looking for the 14 people who ran out of the facilities, once the plane was parked in one of the car parks.
A driver warned at half past five in the morning that he crossed the C-31 motorway with a group of people, who tried to stop expressway vehicles.
At least one of the fled was located in a long-stay car park and was left in charge of the Civil Guard, according to police sources.
The chaotic episode took place at dawn and, unlike the case of Palma, did not significantly affect the airport.
The event delves into the security failures that were already detected on November 5, 2021 at the Palma airport, when an Air Arabia Airbus A321 that also covered the route between Casablanca and Turkey notified the tower that one of the passengers had suffered a diabetic coma.
After the emergency landing and once the sick passenger and his companion had been evacuated, a group of 23 passengers caused a riot and a situation of chaos that allowed them to leave through the front stairs of the plane, ignoring the captain's instructions, and they went to the flight through the airport runways to overcome the perimeter of the enclosure and enter the country irregularly.
The event caused the paralysis of the airport for several hours, which affected 81 flights.
Subsequently,
In April, the judge agreed to prosecute 21 of the migrants for sedition for trying to enter Spain.
The magistrate considered that there was "a whole series of indications" that allowed us to consider that there was a "preconceived plan" that consisted of simulating and causing an alleged serious illness of a passenger and taking advantage of the rest of the people to "undertake flight and violate the rules Spanish regulations on the entry of people into Spain”.
⚠️ An Airbus A321Neo from the Turkish airline Pegasus that covered the Casablanca-Istanbul route was diverted to Barcelona.
pic.twitter.com/DkBwOLTvMc
– AeroBarcelona News (@AeropuertoBCN) December 7, 2022
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