29 December 2022, Gibraltar Airport is experiencing its second day of flight diversions. Today flight EZY8901 scheduled to land at Gibraltar from London Gatwick at 11:00 AM was diverted to Malaga for landing.
According to the Gibraltar Chronicle, "there was a telephone line failure between the Seville Air Traffic Control Centre and Gibraltar."
The day prior, on 28 December 2022, both afternoon flights were diverted to Malaga. This is when Ministry of Flight became aware of the issue.
I was paying attention to flight BA490 which was scheduled to come in for landing at Gibraltar Airport at approximately 4:35 PM. As I was watching the flight on FlightRadar24, I noticed it start a holding pattern over the South of Spain, see picture below. I was also paying close attention to its rate of descent which seemed abnormal for its location. I watch the planes coming into Gibraltar quite frequently, so I'm somewhat used to their flight path and rates of descent.
I was somewhat confused as FlightRadar24 kept showing an incoming arrival time to Gibraltar, it had not yet updated that the flight would be diverted to Malaga. I checked both of my devices and computer to make sure I was seeing it correctly, thinking maybe my device was not updating or was sending the wrong information.
After several checks the Advisory Screen at the bottom of the FlightRadar24 app popped up showing the "Diverting To-Malaga (AGP)," status.
After some Twitter checks and some updates from locals I found out it was due to a phone line issue. Apparently, The Seville Airport tower passes the flight over to Gibraltar Airport tower via telephone service. I have not heard of that before, but for the safety of passengers it makes sense.
Watching flight BA490 in its holding pattern also makes sense that it was still in contact with the Seville Airport tower. It circled twice in that area until finally showing it heading toward Malaga.
My first thought was maybe something had happened on the plane, like a medical emergency, because the holding pattern seemed so unusual. Most of the holding patterns I observe for Gibraltar Airport; the planes hold out over the Alboran Sea before coming in for landing at Gibraltar or diverting to Malaga.
Today, marks the second day and third flight incident of diversions to Malaga. I don't have a resource yet to find out if todays diversion was caused by the same telephone incident or maybe a new issue has arose.
Gibraltar Airport has two more flights scheduled for 29 December 2022, BA490 out of LHR and EZY6299 out of Bristol. I'm sure customers are on edge wondering if they will be headed to Malaga for their flights or if the telephone issues will have been resolved by 4:30 today. I did note, the diversion of flight EZY8901 happened fairly quickly. The flight had not even reached Cordoba by the time it was diverted, it seems they must have had plenty of warning to know they would not be landing at Gibraltar.
Anytime a flight is diverted from Gibraltar it's frustrating. Passengers have to bus to Malaga and vice versa, (I cover that in this article here). I'm hoping the issue with the telephone gets fixed rather quickly so Gibraltar Airport can get on with its regular flight schedule. We will know by this afternoon if the British Airways flight is able to land here.
Check out this documentary by Ministry of Flight of The Road on the Runway at Gibraltar.
Thanks for reading and be sure to take a look at some of my other articles reporting on and about the Gibraltar Airport. Check out this short documentary about the Road on the Runway at Gibraltar Airport.
Final note: In the past I had a short conversation with some runners who stopped at my location for a quick break. I chatted with them briefly and when I told her my channel name, she responded oh, is that with the government. My response was no, I made it up only to find out that everything else revolving around British and Gibraltar Government is named Ministry. For the record, this channel is not affiliated with any government entity, it's just a name I made up.
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