The passage of a Chinese rocket that has flown over the airspace of several areas of Spain on two occasions this Friday morning has caused the closure of the airspace in Catalonia, Aragón, Navarra, La Rioja and parts of Castilla y León. In the case of Catalonia, the region whose air traffic has been most affected, there have been delays in almost 160 flights at the Barcelona-El Prat airport and another two in Girona, as confirmed by the state airport manager Aena.
Throughout the day today, up to 759 operations are scheduled and those scheduled for the 09:00 to 12:00 time slot have been the ones that have been most affected. Up to 157 flights have been delayed in Barcelona, 66 of which have had a delay of more than 15 minutes and some have even exceeded hours.
At the Girona-Costa Brava airport there have been two operations with a delay of an hour and a half, the arrival and subsequent departure of a plane that connected the Catalan infrastructure with London-Stansted. Reus, for its part, has not been affected in any way despite the closure of its airspace. In the case of the Castellón airport, they have decided to divert some of these flights to Valencia.
The first flight that was supposed to arrive at El Prat airport in Barcelona at 09:00 was coming from Newark, United States, and has been delayed an hour and a half. This is one of many that have been affected by delays caused by the Chinese rocket that flew through the atmosphere this morning. As for the first flight that has suffered a postponement in its departure from Barcelona, it was destined for Munich and has managed to resume its activity an hour later.
The most extreme case that has been seen this morning has been the delay of three and a half hours in the arrival of the flight that came from Madrid with the LATAM airline.
Since flight congestion can last throughout the day, you can check flight status here.
