ENAIRE gives priority to flights carrying medical supplies and to repatriation operations
ENAIRE is currently giving priority to cargo flights carrying healthcare materials intended to combat the coronavirus and COVID-19.
ENAIRE’s air controllers, operations and maintenance technicians and engineers, cognizant of the need for us all to do our part, are making a special effort, from the control centres and towers, to ensure that flights arrive as soon as possible at their destination.
Most of these flights involve cargo aeroplanes from China, with respirators, test kits, surgical masks, personal protective equipment, overcoats, gloves, glasses and protective shields, machinery for making masks, raw materials, and headboards and footboards for hospital beds.
As a critical operator of the State, ENAIRE’s professionals are handling and prioritising all essential cargo and emergency flights 24 hours a day.
ENAIRE is actively and jointly participating in managing the cargo flights operated by the Ministry of Defence and Iberia and Air Europa airlines, which are carrying goods from China and the Czech Republic.
For example, Iberia has chartered several dozen special flights to repatriate more than 6,000 people, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It has also launched the Health Air Corridor initiative, organised and managed together with the Spanish Federation of Health Technology Companies (Fenin), the Oesía Group and Iberia, in concert with four ministries – Health, Foreign Affairs, Finance and Industry, Trade and Tourism – which is allowing cargo flights with medical equipment intended for public and private hospitals to arrive in Spain.
Military, airline and corporate flights
The military flights include an A400M that landed on Monday, 30 March, at the military base in Torrejón de Ardoz after having taken off from Zaragoza on Saturday the 28th en route to Shanghai (China). On board the plane were 14 tonnes of healthcare material, including one million rapid tests to detect coronavirus.
Another Air Force C-130 military aircraft arrived at the Torrejon base in Madrid on Sunday the 29th from the Czech Republic with 10,000 PPE units.
For its part, the airline Iberia opened a health corridor with China on Saturday, 28 March, resulting in the arrival of three flights, one each on Monday the 30th, Tuesday the 31st and Wednesday the 1st of April. The three planes carried a total of 90,000 tonnes of material.
Not to be outdone, a flight operated by the airline Air Europa landed on Saturday, 28 March at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport with 1.2 million masks from China.
An Atlas Air Boeing 747-400 also landed on 23 March at the Zaragoza Airport with 1,396,000 masks and 74,650 protective suits that the Spanish multinational Inditex donated to health authorities to prevent the spread of coronavirus amongst the health personnel who are fighting this epidemic. The Jumbo plane arrived from Zhengzhou (China) after a refuelling stop at the Almaty Airport (Kazakhstan).
The textile firm Mango also chartered an aeroplane that landed on Tuesday the 31st at the Zaragoza Airport with two million masks that it is donating to the Ministry of Health.