Hundreds of tourists found themselves stranded earlier this week due to an operational issue at the Diagoras airport in Rhodes that send holidaymakers to the wrong destination.
Flights with the island of Rhodes as their final destination ended up landing on the islands of Kos and Crete and even in Turkey, due to a system failure.
Diagoras airport is one of the 14 Greek airports that were privatised last year and are being operated by German consortium Fraport.
The electronic data systems of the reportedly crashed making the electronic check in process impossible; all the check ins had to be done manually resulting in long delays in arrivals and departures.
Moreover, airplanes were diverted elsewhere to avoid air collisions and travelers had to spend even up to four days away from their destination. The issue begun as early as Sunday and continued till Monday, affecting several flights.
In many instances, airplanes had to fly over Rhodes for over an hour as there was no parking allocated prior to being redirected.
“All tourists arrived on Rhodes yesterday,” reported local newspaper Dimokratiki yesterday, noting that a total of seven charter flights landed at Dalaman airport in Turkey and another six on Kos and Crete. Local tour operators reportedly took care of the tourists’ accommodation and ensured their safe transportation by sea and air to Rhodes.
“The unprecedented problem at the airport caused a great deal of disruption to the airline’s flight program, but it also resulted in the great discomfort of the visitors and the defamation of the island.” the newspaper continued.
Fraport attributed the mixup to a third party provider.
“Fraport’s priority is to look at what exactly went wrong, why the back-up system did not work and to decide whether it will continue the cooperation with the provider or require ‘safeguards’ to avoid similar problems in the future,” a Fraport spokesperson told Dimokratiki.
Two days before the incident Fraport Greece chief Alexander Zinell had promised officials on Rhodes that the Diagoras airport would be upgraded to a level compatible with the Dodecanese capital’s prestigious status.
