Air controllers shut most of Spanish airspace

Controllers started calling in sick and leaving posts barely two hours into a new shift at 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) at airports around Spain, airport operator AENA said.

Within hours, the shutdown had spread from Madrid and the Balearic islands to cover all of Spain except for the southern region of Andalucia, a spokesman said.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's office warned the military would take over organisation, planning, supervision and control of air space unless the controllers returned to work.

Transport Minister Jose Blanco condemned the mass, coordinated action. "We will not allow this blackmail which is using citizens as hostages," he told a news conference.

Airport operator AENA said it was an "intolerable" and possibly criminal act which hit more than 100,000 passengers at the start of a long weekend, warning of disciplinary dismissals.

Ninety percent of controllers had abandoned their work posts, and there were only three left at Madrid's Barajas airport to cope with landing aircraft, he added.

Angry passengers, some shouting "shameless", crowded around airline counters at packed airports across the country.

"This is insulting. We live in a Third World country. We have incompetent controllers and an incompetent government," said 37-year-old lawyer Laura Torre stuck in Madrid while trying to reach Lanzarote with her husband.

A 24-year-old Briton, Shona Walker, said she had spent from Sunday to Wednesday unable to leave Edinburgh for Madrid because of bad weather. Now she was unable to leave Madrid to get back home. "We don't know what is going to happen," she said.

AENA, the European air safety authority Eurocontrol and the Federal Aviation Administration agreed to allow Spain-bound transatlantic flights already in the air to land but to ground those yet to take off.

"The intolerable attitude of controllers has led to the closure of air space of Madrid and the airports of Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza and Minorca," AENA said in a statement.

"This irresponsible decision is causing huge disruption in air traffic in the whole of Spain," it said.

"The decision to paralyse air traffic in the country is extremely serious and, as well as being extremely serious misconduct that could be punished with disciplinary dismissals of controllers who refuse to work, it constitutes a crime according to article 409 of the penal code."

It accused them of flouting the rights of "hundreds of thousands of passengers" travelling this weekend.

Next Monday and Wednesday are days off in Spain and many people will also take Tuesday so as to have a five-day break.

Flag carrier Iberia had no warning of the action, a spokeswoman said. The action had forced the cancellation 128 flight departures from Spain by about 9:00 pm (2000 GMT).

All further Iberia flights were cancelled until 11:00 am (1000 GMT) on Saturday, she said.

The action coincided with a cabinet decision Friday to change the way Spain's airports work.

The government stipulated that the maximum time worked by air traffic controllers was 1,670 hours a year but said that this total did not include non-aeronautical work.

A spokesman for the Syndicate Union of Air Controllers said rules on working hours would mean time taken for paternity or sick leave would not count within the maximum working hours for air traffic controllers.

The decision on working hours was announced along with a package of measures to raise extra money for the Spanish government and calm market fears of a Greek-style debt crisis striking the country.

The government also said it would sell up to 49 percent of AENA, raising as much as nine billion euros according to Spanish media in a significant expansion of earlier plans to sell only 30 percent.

It aims to rein in the public deficit from 11.1 percent of gross domestic product last year, the third highest in the eurozone after Greece and Ireland, to 3.0 percent -- the European Union limit -- by 2013.