A Boeing 737-800 plane from the Turkish company Pegasus Airlines linking Casablanca to Istanbul with 228 passengers on board, landed in an emergency early this morning on the tarmac of El Prat airport in Barcelona.
The cause of this diversion, according to the crew, a pregnant Moroccan woman who had lost her water and who had to be transferred to the hospital, hence the urgency of landing. The lady was taken to hospital. Two patrols from the Civil Guard and the medical services had, at the request of the crew, gone to the plane to do this and take care of the pregnant woman, but when the doors opened, a group of about 30 people jumped off and scurried down the track.
According to the Spanish government, a total of 28 people took advantage of this “providence stopover” to leave the aircraft. Fourteen people were arrested by the police, including the “pregnant woman” five voluntarily returned to the plane while the process of non-admission began for the other eight. It turned out that for the pregnant woman, examined at the hospital, she was not about to give birth, the government added. She was arrested for an alleged crime of public disorder.
Officers continue to search for the remaining fourteen illegal migrants. The fugitives are still running in the Spanish countryside having not been found immediately. Five of those arrested were taken back on board the plane of the Turkish company Pegasus Airlines while eight others will be deported to Morocco. It is not the first time that an illegal entry attempt by “patera airways” has occurred in this way on Spanish territory.
A little over a year ago, on November 5, 2021, a similar event occurred at Palma de Mallorca airport. An Air Arabia Maroc plane, which was also flying the Casablanca-Istanbul route, had landed for a medical emergency. The runways at Son Sant Joan airport were closed for four hours, paralyzing flight arrival and departure operations.
Twenty migrants, mostly of Moroccan nationality, had tried to flee and the police had only managed to locate a dozen. The National Police and the Civil Guard launched a search device in the area and within hours they arrested five others. Twelve people fled and twelve others were arrested.
This second attempt at illegal entry through airports reveals a security breach in border controls. The dispute in the Balearic Islands has already put on the table the need to modify the protocols of action in air transport. The judge having confirmed for Palma de Mallorca that it was a “moderately organized” and violent action with endangerment of the occupants of the plane. In Barcelona, it remains to be determined whether the passengers in question also organized a riot on the plane by which they succeeded in taking to their heels.
We will also not fail to determine whether this operation was hatched in Facebook or Meta like its previous one. It had been clarified, indeed during the investigation in Palma de Mallorca, that the young Moroccans had declared that in the worst case they would be taken to a terminal where there would only be a private security guard who could not prevent them from fleeing, thus enticing interested people to enroll in this flight.
This incident has raised serious questions about the security of airports and immigration routes in Europe. There has been speculation with this new method of entering Europe, which some Spanish media are now calling the “patera aeria” or “patera airways”. Another precedent of its kind, with regard to aerial immigration, which is increasingly emulated and says more about the phenomenon, is the paraglider used at the beginning of the month to cross the fence and border of Melillia by a Sub-Saharan. This is called free flight or aerobatics. But at his own risk…