An article published on web page "AviaciónDigital":
What do not have to happen, is happening. Tension is growing between the air traffic controllers working in ACC Torrejón and Barajas control tower , and AENA Management Area, which has taken the responsability that until now had the air traffic controllers in decisions related to runway configurations or traffic regulations . The "Decretazo" , a goverment rule issued on last friday, is taking over the safety criteria, something that the Crisis plan made by the Service provider AENA does not include. When politics decisions are beginning to overlap the technical and operational criteria, you create situations that are making the controllers hair standing on end.
According to Aviacion digital sources, people who belongs to AENA´s structure, some of them without operational license, are giving the orders over the ones given by supervisors, following direct orders from the political establishment.
Yesterday at the Torrejón Air traffic Control Center (ACC) , a lot of pressure was received in order to open up ten sectors simultaneously, despite not having the necessary staff. The consequences were aircrafts doing holding patterns, tension in front of the air traffic control positions, and the Center Supervisor about to explode. Finally the good sense prevailed and just 6 sectors were opened.
On Sunday, tension has continued throughout the day, with random changes in the runway configurations, being increased by the fact that there was a flight calibration (ils calibration) being carried out on the runway 18L (18 left) and that were also affecting the take-off from 15R (15 right) . The Air Navigation director, Carmen Librero (she is not an air traffic controller), has requested an explanation from the Control tower boss and from the person responsable for the ATC operations room., and as far as Aviaciondigital knows ,some threats have come to light. According to AD sources, what they are trying to do is "to take some hostages" by using some disciplinary actions, in order to force the air traffic controller union in some way during an hypothetical labor negotiations. They said that a flight calibration "would be an excellent opportunity" to accomplish this. It's kind of bait ...
AENA managers unilaterally and inexplicably decided to give priority to the calibration flight, above all the commercial flights approaching to Barajas Airport, most of them had to be put on holding patterns.
Then, noboy took the measures to regulate the number of takeoffs from Barajas, so that the air traffic controlers could not cope wiht the ammount of traffic that they were forced to manage, and as result the pilots were stunned. Additionally, more runway changes were made at the request of AENA Management Area, with all the taxiways saturated and some situations that might call "delicate" from the point of view of air traffic control. Meanwhile the planes were being unnecessary acumulated in the holding points of the runways.
The situation, being the most objective as possible, was reaching to the limit literally, with the powerlessness of the situation, the threat to the Head of Operations Room at Barajas Tower, and a few miles away the Supervisor of the ACC in Torrejón de Ardoz having to leave the Control room due to a nervous breakdown, as we have indicated various sources in this frenetic late-night Sunday