Iberian power outage causes flight disruptions in Spain and Portugal

While some airports have used contingency generators to partially restore operations, the disruption continued to affect services. Sky News quoted a traveler at Barcelona-El Prat Airport mentioning that although "power is on again now, but still no gate screens are on." Other reports indicated challenges for passengers traveling to departure airports, with disruptions impacting public transport services such as the Madrid Metro.

Data from FlightAware in the afternoon showed delayed but few canceled flights to and from Spanish and Portuguese airports. In Madrid alone, 50 departures and 30 arrivals faced delays, with one cancellation each way. According to aviation analytics company Cirium, approximately 709 flights with 122,870 seats were scheduled to depart Portugal, alongside 3,005 scheduled flights with 520,777 seats from Spain on April 28, 2025.

By 15:45 UTC, Cirium reported 96 canceled departures in Portugal, with Lisbon losing nearly 30% of its flights. Spain saw 45 canceled flights, with Barcelona and Madrid experiencing smaller but notable cancellation rates of 3% and 2.6%, respectively.

Both Spain and Portugal’s major airports started planning strategies to manage the lack of power by the mid-afternoon. Portugal’s Lisbon Airport initially paused arrivals, then allowed a reduced number of flights starting at 16:30 local time. Similarly, Madrid Barajas Airport limited arrivals to 20 per hour, down from the usual 60. In contrast, Barcelona reduced inbound capacity by 50%, which still resulted in significant delays.

The disruption’s full impact remains unclear as recovery efforts continue.