How ENAIRE managed airspace when the lights went out

On 28 April, a nationwide power outage affected Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France, massively disrupting public services, businesses and homes. This immediately posed an enormous challenge to ENAIRE, whose mandate is to keep Spanish airspace open to traffic at all times. How could it continue its operations when the electricity grid was down?

Despite the scale of the incident, ENAIRE’s Air Navigation System remained fully operational thanks to the robustness of its infrastructure and the value of strategic investment planning for managing contingency situations.

Effective coordination and management during the crisis

From the outset, ENAIRE activated its Resilience and Contingency Plan, designed to ensure service continuity in the event of major incidents. The Air Traffic Control Centres in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Palma de Mallorca, Gran Canaria, and the Terminal Area Control Centre in Valencia, as well as the 378 facilities housing radar systems, radio navigation aids, and communications equipment distributed across the country, are equipped with autonomous, alternative, and redundant power systems. This allowed these facilities to continue operating as normal during the outage.

Likewise, the transmission of surveillance and communications data between ENAIRE’s facilities and the air traffic control centres and airport control towers is ensured by a data network infrastructure supported by two independent telecommunications operators. Thanks to this redundancy, service continuity was maintained despite localised availability issues at certain nodes in both operators’ transport networks, caused by the depletion of their secondary power sources.

Operational impact and measures taken

The outage mainly affected certain nodes within the telecommunications networks, resulting in interruptions to radar data and communications transmission in specific geographic areas. Although the equipment in ENAIRE’s own facilities remained 100% available throughout the incident, the simultaneous loss of availability in the infrastructure of both telecoms operators in some regions necessitated the implementation of air traffic flow management measures, temporarily reducing capacity in order to maintain the safety of operations.

These measures were implemented selectively and gradually, depending on the availability of network nodes from the two operators and the progress in restoring the power supply. It should be noted that the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands were not affected thanks to the stability of the communications networks in these territories.

Operational data: significant performance in extreme circumstances

On 28 April, ENAIRE managed 6,176 flights, with an average delay of 7.29 minutes per flight and a 15-minute punctuality rate of 90.32%, reflecting 90% operational performance compared to a normal day. This demonstrates remarkable stability and continuity of performance on a day when much of Spain simply went into shut-down mode.

Continuous analysis and improvement

Following the incident, and as a proactive measure, ENAIRE’s Crisis Committee launched a thorough analysis to identify lessons learned and improve response protocols for similar situations in the future. Proactive coordination with EUROCONTROL, airports operator Aena, airlines, and airspace user associations enabled the adoption of additional measures to mitigate the impact on flights, minimising cancellations and ensuring the safe and orderly flow of air traffic.

Resilience and commitment to safety

The outcomes in this unprecedented situation demonstrate the high level of resilience within ENAIRE’s air navigation system. This is the result of strategic investment planning and actions focused on operational safety and the uninterrupted service provision in critical infrastructure. Thanks to this planning and the efforts of ENAIRE’s staff on the day, we successfully navigated our way through a crisis situation and ensured that air passengers reached their destination as planned.

ENAIRE’s efforts to strengthen crisis response capabilities are essential to ensuring service continuity, even under particularly adverse conditions. This adaptability underscores ENAIRE’s commitment to safety, efficiency, and service quality within Spain’s air navigation system—a capability that, by extension, also applies to all actors in the air transport sector, who once again demonstrated the strength that stems from strategic investment planning, the measures implemented, and outstanding teamwork.