Hundreds of thousands of passengers packed Spain's airports Sunday as flights resumed after the military forced air traffic controllers to end a 24-hour wildcat strike under threat of jail. The strike hit an estimated 300,000 passengers on a long holiday weekend, whipping up the most chaotic scenes since an Icelandic volcano erupted in April and halted 100,000 flights world-wide.
Controllers had called in sick en masse on Friday, rapidly shutting down the nation's airspace. The government then declared a state of alert for the first time since the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975, putting controllers under military command with the threat of jail terms for refusing orders. Public Works Minister Jose Blanco said 97 percent of controllers who were scheduled to work on Sunday had turned up and 162,000 passengers had been able to fly since the nation's airspace reopened on Saturday.
"We are re-establishing normality bit by bit and now it is time to do justice," he told a news conference before adding that airport operator AENA had opened disciplinary proceedings against 442 controllers.
Traffic controllers told the press that troops forced them to work "at gunpoint" in Palma de Mallorca control tower, but there was little sympathy for the staff who earn an average 200,000 euros (267,000 dollars) a year.