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Fire breaks out at Geneva Airport as reception centre for asylum seekers 'explodes' during construction, Switzerland
Flights to and from Geneva Airport were disrupted on Friday evening, 20 May 2022, after a fire broke out at a reception centre for asylum seekers on site. Images appeared to show evidence of a blast at Switzerland's second-busiest airport, where black smoke could be seen spewing into the sky from the site. Airport spokesman, Ignace Jeannerat, said that “the new reception centre for asylum-seekers, which was under construction, is on fire. It is outside the airport perimeter. “It is creating a lot of smoke,” Emergency services attended the scene and hosed down the building that was covered by scaffolding and tarpaulins.
The airport, located next to the Swiss border with France, has a single concrete runway almost 4km long. It is the second-busiest airport in Switzerland, after Zurich. Airport spokesman Ignace Jeannerat in the evening said the blaze was 'under control' but staff needed to 'secure the area and remove the debris'. The airport left it up to pilots whether their flights departed from the airport but all arrivals and take-offs were suspended. Flights out of the airport began resuming after 19h00, with the airport said to be operating as normal by the end of the evening. Around 20 flights were said to be affected by the fire, with at least 11 cancelled. With concerns for the safety of flights and passengers, many airlines chose to divert their aircraft to nearby airports, with flights suspended due to the nearby fire. Some inbound flights were diverted to Lyon and Basel. Geneva is Switzerland's second-busiest airport after Zurich. Wedged in on the edge of Swiss territory, the runway is next to the border with France. In 2021, the airport welcomed more than 5.9 million passengers, down from the pre-pandemic level of nearly 18 million in 2019. Sources: Daily Mail, Euro News |
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