Spanish Airline Crisis Strands Thousands of Immigrants

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 bought tickets from suspended all flights.

Groups of immigrants were yesterday sleeping on mattresses at Madrid's Barajas airport and thousands more were waiting in Barcelona and other cities to see whether the Air Madrid airline would start flying again. Scuffles broke out between police and stranded Colombian passengers at Madrid airport.

Some 120,000 people are holding tickets to fly with the transatlantic carrier which halted operations without warning on Friday. Spain suspended its licence to fly a day later, citing the airline's repeated failure to manage its aircraft adequately.

Part of the 1,200-strong workforce yesterday came up with a rescue plan for the airline but its owner, José Luis Carrillo, was reportedly looking for buyers elsewhere. Other reports said that he was on the point of filing for bankruptcy.

Spain's transport ministry has organised 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 November and December, yesterday said they could not do so without Air Madrid's go-ahead.

The airline's collapse has made headlines across Latin America. "We are tired and hungry," read handwritten posters stuck to the window of the empty Air Madrid offices at the airport in Chile's capital, Santiago. "We don't want money, we want to travel."

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 distraught after paying thousands of euros to go home and see 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. "We'll have to find a way to return because our work is here, everything we have is here," he told Reuters.