MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chaos and complaints against Lan.

Punta Arenas airport suffered two days of chaos when hundreds of Lan passengers were left stranded and protesting following delays in arrivals and departures because of adverse climate conditions.

It all started last Friday when Lan flight 285 with 148 passengers that were expected mid afternoon in Punta Arenas, because of fog, had to reroute late in the evening to Rio Gallegos, Argentina, and finally returned to Chile and spent the night in Puerto Montt, the original departure city.

This caused an agglomeration of passengers in Punta Arenas airport where they had gathered for a scheduled mid afternoon flight.

Apparently Lan did not offer the stranded passengers much information about what was happening and did not accommodate non Punta Arenas residents for having to spend the night in the city.

Punta Arenas press reports that this caused chaos in the air terminal and fury among passengers with some having to be given medical attention.

A similar situation occurred the following day when Friday and Saturday passengers turned out in Punta Arenas airport expecting to fly north or to wait for relatives in the delayed flights.

To make things worse passengers from one of the main departing flights had to be transferred from an Airbus to a smaller Boeing 737 for "maintenance reasons". Finally on Sunday things gradually returned to normal.

Passengers complained bitterly about Lan's lack of information during the cancellation of flights and the fact that the head of the company's operations in Punta Arenas airport was not available.

However staff from Lan's desk argued that "security measures" impede the company from giving information about passengers.