Shutdown lifted in 45 hours at Jeju airport

The flight operation of Jeju International Airport has resumed on Monday in about 45 hours after being suspended due to severe cold and strong winds. It appears that about 90,000 passengers stranded at the airport will be able to leave Jeju Island on Tuesday by plane.

On Monday, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that the flight operation of the Jeju airport was resumed at 2:48 p.m. in roughly 45 hours after the shutdown order was issued at 5:45 p.m. on Saturday. The gust alert and the heavy snowfall watch were lifted around noon Monday as the airstrip condition has recovered good enough to resume the operation.

As flights were resumed, a legion of 10,000 passengers streamed into the airport. However, the speed of operations was slow. According to the Jeju headquarters of the Korea Airport Service, the interim of landing and take-offs was about 10 minutes in the early hours after the operation resumed. “The takeoff and landing was delayed as we had to move 36 planes on the runway and remove the snow as well,” said an official from the Jeju headquarters.

Additional flights were serviced for the stranded passengers. “Night flight regulation will be lifted, and the flights will be operated 24 hours a day so that all passengers can leave Jeju by Tuesday,” said an official from the Transport Ministry. The ministry lifted the night flight regulation on the Kimpo and Kimhae international airports temporarily (from 11:00 p.m. on Monday to 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday).

Korean Air decided to provide a total of 7,736 eats by deploying 35 provisional flights to Jeju on Monday alone, starting from the first one destined for Kimpo that took off at 3:00 p.m. Asiana Airline has also decided to send 20 provisional flights to provide a total of 4,723 seats.

Sea lanes were also opened on Monday for Jeju, with four liners carrying 3,100 passengers. Only four were operated on Monday among 14 passenger ships are operated in nine sea lanes that connect Jeju, Busan, Yeosu, Wando, and Mokpo.

조은아 기자 · 광주=이형주기자 peneye09@donga.com