Landing permission: Canary Islands, lifesaver for emergencies in the air
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On the morning of March 19, a flight left Cape Verde towards Paris. Everything seemed normal, but, after a couple of hours of travel, when the aircraft was flying over the Canary archipelago, the crew reported that one of the passengers was suffering a possible heart attack and required priority to urgently divert to Gran Canaria. Air traffic controllers facilitated the descent and, in less than twenty minutes, the plane successfully landed on the round island, where the person was treated by emergency services.
This is what José Luis Feliu, spokesperson for the Union of Air Traffic Controllers of the Canary Islands (USCA), says. one of his last interventions this same month at the islands’ Air Traffic Control Center, located at the Gran Canaria airport.
Although for Feliu these types of situations are not alarming, since, as an air traffic controller, he must deal with them often. “Air diversions, for whatever reasons, happen more frequently than people imagine and are perfectly controllable,” he says on the other end of the phone.
Two “safe points”
In this sense, the Canary Islands offer two “safe points” on its capital islands where planes that are forced to change their course and land in the archipelago can do so with the greatest guarantees. They are the airports of Gran Canaria and Tenerife South. Both “operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, throughout the year, to address incidents that occur in the air,” explains the USCA spokesperson.
Flight deviations can occur for different reasons. Medical emergencies and adverse weather are the most common. According to the most recent data from the Canary Islands Air Traffic Control Center, so far this year there have been seven flights that have had to stop in the islands due to a medical emergency on board. an average of two planes per month.
The airports of Gran Canaria and Tenerife South have special relevance in assisting diverted planes
Due to bad weather, there have been a total of 90 detours to the Canary Islands in the same period. «If a flight that is flying over the archipelago cannot land at its destination due to bad weather, You have the security of being able to detour to both Gran Canaria and Tenerife South until the weather improves,” says Feliu.
Choosing an island on which to land is not a decision of the air traffic controllers, but of the aircraft’s own crew in distress. “This will make sure to opt for the alternative that best suits the situation; they usually do this based on proximity,” he says.
Air diversions
97
Flights have been diverted to the islands in the first three months of 2024, according to the Canary Islands Air Traffic Control Center. Of these, seven were due to medical incidents and 90 due to bad weather.
Other causes
There are “less frequent” reasons why planes may request to land on the islands: the closure of an airport, a technical failure, lack of fuel, a strike at the destination, a conflict inside the plane, among others. In short, any scenario that puts the safety of passengers and crew at risk. “Detours are usually a nuisance, but they save lives,” says the air traffic controller.
In this regard, José Luis Feliu highlights the importance of the airports of Gran Canaria and Tenerife South in assisting diverted flights. He assures that the two air terminals function as a “cushion”, like a lifesaver in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for the large number of aircraft that travel day after day through the EUR/SAM Corridor, which is the one that connects the flow of air traffic between Europe and South America and the one that crosses the Canary Islands airspace, the largest in Spain.
«Diverted flights head to their destination when the person’s life is not in danger»
When a medical emergency occurs during a flight, in a health-unfriendly environment with limited access to medical equipment, the crew must adopt a rapid emergency response at 30,000 feet. If a person’s life is at risk, the commander will decide to divert the flight to an alternative airport and will notify the control center. “When this happens in Canarian airspace, we inform the pilots that they can stop, according to their flight plan, in Gran Canaria or Tenerife South, and they choose,” explains José Luis Feliu.
Once the landing site has been chosen, the captain will suggest a route and the best time to begin the descent. “That’s when we move other planes out of the way to make room for the emergency and facilitate the descent, allowing a direct trajectory to the airport,” says the USCA spokesperson.
Meanwhile, the control center will coordinate with the control tower of the chosen airport, which will be in charge of granting the commander authorization to land and controlling that the maneuver is carried out successfully. It will also coordinate with the air terminal in question, which, at the same time, will coordinate with the emergency services “so that they enter the plane as soon as possible when it has landed,” says Feliu.
The medical staff will assess the affected person on site and decide whether they should be transferred by ambulance to the nearest hospital until they recover and are authorized to fly home. As soon as the emergency has been resolved and the injured party has been brought to safety, the aircraft will prepare to take flight again. “Diverted planes head to their destination when the person’s life is no longer in danger, when they are treated by doctors on the ground,” said the controller.
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