Air Madrid stops flying and leaves thousands to a pretty awful Christmas
Air Madrid was an ultra low cost airline from Spain that attracted a stong follow up by offering heavily discounted tickets from Spain to Latin America. The airline was covering mostly intercontinental routes between Spain and Latin America. The tickets were in many cases a third or less of the tickets charged by traditional airlines from Europe or Latin America covering the routes (less than a thousand dollars versus a few thousand).
The airline was becoming a true legend in the 2 years it had been operating. The planes were in a very poor state and were often repaired in the air with duct tape or even with simple scotch tape. Here is a video posted at Rodrigo's blog with the perspective of a passenger. It is a true shock. The video is in spanish, but it very graphical and it shows how poor the Air Madrid planes were.
Over the weekend, in Colombia, the news of Air Madrid's suspension of activities made the cover of leading news papers. In some South American countries, like Colombia or Argentina, recent economic or political crisis sent a lot of people out of their countries to look for a job. Many found jobs in Spain, making the european country a prime destiny for South American emigration.
The really bad news is that many people that are being left behind in the ground are poor people that saved for months or even years to buy a plane ticket to visit their family in Christmas... and now they are sleeping at terminals in Spain and Latin America, looking for a Government-driven solution. Air Madrid, now a symbol of the worst of the airline industry, is now closed forever.
