The Palma de Mallorca police arrested eleven people who fled from an Airbus A320 plane that made an emergency landing at the city’s airport, one of the busiest in Spain. The airport was paralysed for three hours.
The plane which was on a flight between Casablanca (Morocco) and Istanbul (Turkey) diverted Friday at 20:15 to Palma de Mallorca due to the faked illness of a passenger, said the Civil Guard. During the evacuation of the “ill” traveller, about 20 passengers ran away from the plane on the tarmac and jumped over the fence of the airport. The other passengers remained on board.
The police and the Civil Guard immediately began searching the airport, paralysing its activities until 23:30 for safety reasons.
According to the daily ‘El Pais’, investigators are working on the hypothesis of a set-up with a view to entering Spain illegally.
From the 11 runaway passengers, a group was arrested in the Sa Cabana area (municipality of Marratxi), 13 kilometres from the airport. At least nine other people were still at large.
The “sick” passenger was taken to a hospital, where he was declared in perfect health and arrested by the police for “helping with illegal immigration and breaking the law on foreigners“, according to the newspaper El Pais. The person accompanying him fled as soon as he arrived at the hospital.
According to FlightRadar24, the aircraft was an Airbus A320 from Air Arabia Maroc registered CN-NMG, which was on a flight between Casablanca and Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen.
As a result of the incident, 13 planes bound for Palma were diverted to other airports (Ibiza, Mahon, Valencia and Barcelona, and even one to Madrid), 7 incoming flights were cancelled and 16 departing flights suffered significant delays.
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