Storms on Canary Islands leave hundreds of Dutch stranded

Dozens of flights to and from the Canary Islands had to land at other airports on Sunday due to severe storms on the islands. Heavy rains an winds over 100 kilometers per hour made it impossible for flights to land on or take off from the islands during the afternoon. Many hundreds of Dutch holiday makers were affected, AD reports.

Flightradar24 shows that many flights had to move to Morocco and Faro in Portugal. These detours affected hundreds of Dutch tourists using airlines TUI and Transavia, according to the newspaper.

The passengers of one TUI Dreamliner to Lanzarote spent the night in Faro, a spokesperson for TUI said to RTL Nieuws. TUI hopes to transport them the rest of the way to Lanzarote or Fuertaventura on Monday. "You have to make an assessment while you are already on the way. You do not want to take any risks, so we detoured." Another flight underway to Tenerife and La Palma instead landed in Gran Canaria. All passengers were housed in hotels, the TUI spokesperson said.

Three Transavia flights had to land at other airports. "One flight to Arecife went to Fuertaventura and two others with the destinations Las Palmas and Arecife detoured to Faro. These people are accommodated in hotels", a Transavia spokesperson said to RTL. 

Ger de Jonge from Rotterdam is one of the passengers that ended up in Faro. "We heard the news when we had just flown past Faro. The captain said that we had to turn around because of the heavy rainfall", the 70-year-old man said to AD. Returning to Amsterdam was not an option. He finds it annoying, but won't let it ruin his holiday. "It's only a day less. In advance I looked at the weather forecasts and saw it coming a bit. I had already prepared to sit inside a lot."