The morning of Tuesday, December 2nd, was marked by significant disruptions to air traffic destined for Madeira International Airport, due to persistent rainfall in the far east of the island and the resulting lack of visibility.
By shortly after noon, six planes had diverted and two TAP flights—one arriving and one departing—were cancelled.
The first flight to be prevented from landing was the TAP flight from Lisbon, scheduled to arrive shortly after 10:00 AM. The aircraft ended up returning to the Portuguese capital, and both the arrival and departure were declared cancelled.
A Transavia plane from Paris followed, eventually landing in Porto Santo. The Azores Airlines flight from Ponta Delgada had the same destination.
A TUI aircraft, originating in Stuttgart, after circling several times at high altitude, headed towards Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands. Another aircraft from the same company, but coming from Munich, was similarly diverted to Porto Santo.
An easyJet flight from Berlin also attempted to approach the runway at Santa Cruz, but had to abort the landing, diverting afterwards to Porto Santo.
In the early afternoon, two aircraft remained on standby off the coast of Madeira: one from TUI, originating from Dusseldorf, and another from Wizz Air, originating from Katowice, which was already heading towards one of the airports in the Canary Islands.
The last recorded landing at Madeira Airport in the morning occurred at 10:19am, by an easyJet plane arriving from London.
In the early afternoon the weather improved allowing normality at the airport.