The fuel system used to fill up aeroplanes at Lisbon airport failed on Wednesday, leaving aircraft tanks empty and up to 50,000 passengers stranded as flight could not take off.
The fuel system is the responsibility of Grupo Operacional de Combustíveis, run by Petrogal. The equipment malfunctioned at noon on Wednesday and was only corrected during the early hours of Thursday morning.
Delayed flights will take a while to work their way through the system with 64 flights cancelled, 11 diverted and over 300 delayed.
Lisbon airport’s noise ban was lifted last night and many delayed flights were allowed to take off in the early hours.
How badly the number of inbound flights has been affected is not yet known but with the Pope’s visit on Friday, Portugal’s transport networks already are at full stretch and this foul-up will not have helped the taught mood.
Many passengers ended up sleeping at the airport with Civil Protection personnel providing 328 camp beds while engineers worked to fix the fuel system that was brought to its knees by an air blockage.
The airport authority resorted to the old method of filling up aeroplanes, by tanker.
"The situation is returning to normal and the flights have been rescheduled," thanks to "additional deliveries of fuel by tankers," said João Nunes from ANA, a subsidiary of the French-owned Vinci Group.
TAP reported a "dysfunction in the fuel system" which "disrupted all flights."
According to ANA, the breakdown was still "not fully resolved" by late morning on Thursday. "This is the first time we have faced a problem of this nature, which has required an immediate response from us," said João Nunes.
A Ryanair spokesman said that, “Due to a fuelling system outage at Lisbon Airport last night (May 10th), we regret that we were forced to cancel a number of flights to and from Lisbon.
“All affected customers were provided with refreshment and accommodation vouchers, were contacted by email and SMS text message and advised of their options of a full refund, a free transfer onto the next available flight, or a free transfer onto an alternative flight route, in full compliance with EU261 legislation."
Even though none of this was Ryanair’s fault, the company made a rare apology, "Ryanair sincerely apologised to all customers affected by this disruption, which was entirely beyond our control.”
The National Civil Aviation Authority urgently is opening an investigation into the failure of the fuel supply system and will recommend “future action to be taken."
The official source of the aviation regulator, said: "It has decided to initiate an investigation and is undertaking the necessary steps in order to ascertain the circumstances of the failure and future measures to be taken, With a view to ensuring that the situation of yesterday's inoperability does not happen again."
