German airport, airline apologize after 600 spend night on planes
Senior figures at Munich Airport and German airline Lufthansa apologized on Friday for making mistakes that led to hundreds of passengers being forced to spend the night on six aeroplanes caught in bad weather last week.
Investigations since the incident on February 19 revealed that dozens of firefighters who could have helped take the passengers off the planes were in the immediate vicinity but were not called.
"They should have been alerted," said Thomas Hoff Andersson, managing director of aviation and operations at Munich airport.
There were several opportunities that night to remedy the situation with emergency measures, but this did not happen, he said. "We didn't manage it well," said Hoff Andersson, who apologized to the passengers and crews on the affected aircraft.
"We made mistakes that night," said Heiko Reitz, the Lufthansa board member responsible. "Incidents like this cannot be allowed to happen."
Reitz gave three main reasons why the passengers were not removed from the plane: the weather situation was exceptionally difficult; there were too few bus drivers available; and they decided against alerting the airport fire brigade.
According to the airport, 49 firefighters could have been deployed, along with emergency stairs. But as there was no actual danger to passengers, there was no automatic need to trigger an emergency response.
Hoff Andersson explained that there had been a "concatenation of circumstances."
A total of six flights with around 600 passengers on board were affected. The planes were due to take off, but when the bad weather stopped flights from leaving, there were no buses to take the passengers back to the airport terminal.
Later on, even though it was by then nighttime, some flights were allowed to leave before 1 am by obtaining a special flight permit. However, due to the heavy snowfall, the six aircraft concerned were unable to take off and missed their chance.
The chairman of the German Fire Brigades Union, Siegfried Maier, criticized the fact that the airport fire brigade was not alerted.
"An emergency exit and transport into a building might not have been possible for all those affected at the same time, but it would have been possible," he said.
Public prosecutors are examining a police report on the incident. Police said they had prepared a report after a "probably unaffected third party" suggested an investigation.
According to the police, no complaints had been received from affected passengers. Lufthansa had previously announced that those affected would receive financial compensation.
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