Business travellers returning from the long Constitution-Inmaculada holiday weekend ran into an early-morning bottleneck at Palma de Mallorca’s Son Sant Joan Airport on 8 December. Thick inland fog reduced visibility to barely 400 metres, triggering an orange advisory from Spain’s AEMET meteorological agency and obliging air-traffic controllers to increase separation between aircraft. Between 07:00 and 10:00 the airport logged about a dozen delayed arrivals and departures, according to airport sources quoted by Europa Press.
Although the number of flights affected was modest, the incident is a useful reminder that Spain’s island gateways are especially vulnerable to weather-related disruption during the winter. Palma handled more than 20 million passengers in 2024, many of them on tight, one-day business itineraries that leave little margin for delay. For corporates, the advice is to keep connecting buffers generous—particularly on winter morning rotations—and to remind travelling staff that EU261 compensation does not apply when weather is the root cause.
![Dense fog causes morning delays at Palma de Mallorca Airport]()
For executives shuttling between mainland hubs and the Balearics, ensuring that passports and, where applicable, residence permits or multi-entry Schengen visas are in order is equally important. VisaHQ’s bilingual Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/) provides a quick, mobile-friendly way to verify requirements, initiate renewals and arrange courier collection—saving travel managers precious time when last-minute rebookings or reroutings occur due to weather.
Airlines mitigated the impact by swapping in additional ground staff once visibility improved and by rerouting some traffic via Barcelona. By 11:00 local time operations had returned to normal, but the knock-on effect stretched into the early afternoon as aircraft and crews were repositioned. Hotels near the airport reported a brief spike in last-minute day-use bookings from travellers forced to wait out the fog.
For mobility managers overseeing Balearic assignments, the episode underscores the value of real-time travel-risk monitoring tools and of maintaining flexible accommodation contracts on the islands during peak holiday periods. With a further spell of low-pressure weather forecast for mid-December, companies with project teams in Palma are already revisiting contingency plans, including the option of routing key staff through Madrid-Barajas when tight client deadlines are at stake.
Although the number of flights affected was modest, the incident is a useful reminder that Spain’s island gateways are especially vulnerable to weather-related disruption during the winter. Palma handled more than 20 million passengers in 2024, many of them on tight, one-day business itineraries that leave little margin for delay. For corporates, the advice is to keep connecting buffers generous—particularly on winter morning rotations—and to remind travelling staff that EU261 compensation does not apply when weather is the root cause.
For executives shuttling between mainland hubs and the Balearics, ensuring that passports and, where applicable, residence permits or multi-entry Schengen visas are in order is equally important. VisaHQ’s bilingual Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/) provides a quick, mobile-friendly way to verify requirements, initiate renewals and arrange courier collection—saving travel managers precious time when last-minute rebookings or reroutings occur due to weather.
Airlines mitigated the impact by swapping in additional ground staff once visibility improved and by rerouting some traffic via Barcelona. By 11:00 local time operations had returned to normal, but the knock-on effect stretched into the early afternoon as aircraft and crews were repositioned. Hotels near the airport reported a brief spike in last-minute day-use bookings from travellers forced to wait out the fog.
For mobility managers overseeing Balearic assignments, the episode underscores the value of real-time travel-risk monitoring tools and of maintaining flexible accommodation contracts on the islands during peak holiday periods. With a further spell of low-pressure weather forecast for mid-December, companies with project teams in Palma are already revisiting contingency plans, including the option of routing key staff through Madrid-Barajas when tight client deadlines are at stake.
