Thousands of Latin American immigrants who have spent years saving to spend a Christmas at home with their families are stuck in Spain after the low-cost airline they purchased tickets from suspended all flights.
Groups of immigrants slept yesterday on mattresses at Madrid's Barajas Airport and thousands more were waiting in Barcelona and other cities to see whether Air Madrid would start flying again.
Scuffles
PHOTO: EPA
Scuffles broke out between police and stranded Colombian passengers at Madrid airport.
Some 120,000 people hold tickets to fly with the trans- Atlantic airline, which halted operations without warning on Friday.
Spain suspended its license to fly a day later, citing the airline's repeated failure to manage its aircraft adequately.
Part of the airline's 1,200-strong workforce yesterday came up with a rescue plan for the airline but its owner, Jose Luis Carrillo, was reportedly looking for buyers elsewhere.
Other reports said he was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.
Spain's transport ministry has organized replacement flights to get some 8,000 travellers home, especially those who were visiting Spain on holidays, but thousands more face an uncertain wait.
Travel agents, who had announced they would return money on tickets bought in last month and this month, yesterday said they could not do so without Air Madrid's go-ahead.
Collapse
The airline's collapse has made waves across Latin America. "We are tired and hungry," handwritten posters stuck to the window of the empty Air Madrid offices read at the airport in Santiago.
"We don't want money, we want to travel," another said.
Ecuador refused to let Air Madrid's local manager leave the country and newspapers in Peru reported that some 5,000 Peruvians were trapped in Spain.
The airline had tapped into the market for bringing migrants to Spain, a country which has taken in 2.8 million people -- mostly Latin Americans -- over the past six years.
Those wishing to make cheap trips back to Ecuador, Colombia or Peru had also begun to depend on it.
Some of those stranded were angry after paying thousands of euros to go home to their families, some for the first time in years.
One Ecuadorian at Barajas airport said he had been offered a different flight home but no return flight to Spain.
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