Benghazi airport closure causes travel chaos

By Ayman Amzein and Muttaz Ali.

Benghazi/Tripoli, 6 April 2014:

The closure of Benghazi’s Benina Airport has left hundreds of passengers stranded and . . .[restrict]forced flights to return to their place of origin.

“Some strikers came to the airport last night and dragged large items onto the runway to prevent aircraft from landing,” an airport official told the Libya Herald. “These included mobile stair units for disembarking passengers, luggage trolleys and large rocks.”

One local resident said that his brother was on a Turkish Airlines flight which had to return to Istanbul when it was unable to land at Benina. “He’s back in Turkey now, with no money and he doesn’t know when he will be able to get back,” he said. “There were also several doctors on board who were heading for Benghazi Medical Centre to perform heart surgery but are now stuck in Turkey too.”

Libyan airlines made an urgent appeal calling for the strikers to reopen the airline immediately, saying there were many Libyans stuck in Tunisia. Some of these passengers were sick, injured or disabled people who had been abroad for treatment and needed to get home to their families, the airline said.

The protestors, however, have said they intend to keep the airport closed for ten days as part of a planned general strike against the deteriorating security situation in the East.

The closure has also affected many internal flights, including twelve flights from Tripoli to Benghazi so far.

“I feel very angry and upset about the strike. I have to fly to Benghazi to attend a family occasion but unfortunately I can’t,” one passenger stuck in Tripoli said. “It’s okay to have a strike but they should open hospitals, police stations and airports so people are safe and can move freely in the country because these are very important facilities.”

Others were in much worse situations, he said, such as sick people or those trying to attend funerals of loved ones, who have been left waiting at international airports in Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Oman and Jordan. “Normally, Libyans travel to these countries for medical treatment,” he said, “so closing the airport is not fair.”

He added that the people who imposed the strike should know that the closure of Benina Airport would not affect the government in Tripoli. [/restrict]