Munich Airport and Lufthansa apologize for 600 people spending the night on planes

High-ranking officials at Munich Airport and the German airline Lufthansa apologized on Friday for errors that led to hundreds of passengers being forced to spend the night on board six planes that encountered bad weather last week.

Investigations since the incident that occurred on February 19 revealed that dozens of firefighters who could have helped remove passengers from the planes were nearby, but were not called.

“They had to be mobilized,” said Thomas Hof Andersson, managing director of navigation and operations at Munich Airport.

He pointed to several opportunities that night to address the situation with emergency measures, but this did not happen. Hof Andersson said, “We did not manage the situation well,” and apologized to the passengers and crews of the affected aircraft.

“They made mistakes that night,” said Heiko Reitz, a member of Lufthansa’s board of directors. “These incidents cannot be allowed to happen.”