A total of 357 German nationals who were traveling on a cruise ship from New Zealand and who had been stranded in Puerto Vallarta since March 19, were evacuated to Europe this weekend on a humanitarian airlift.
The Mexican Ministry of Communications and Transportation said that the passengers were evacuated on two charter flights that left Puerto Vallarta, one on Friday, to Iceland, and the other on Saturday, bound for Germany.
The Bahamas-flagged cruise ship MS Europa arrived in Mexico with passengers from New Zealand after stopping in Honolulu, Hawaii, as the last port.
The secretariat indicated that a special protocol was established, with the support of the federal, state and local government, so that all people were individually checked when disembarking by an international health team in Puerto Vallarta and later transferred to the local airport.
According to the official statement, to avoid crowds inside the airport, a “special protocol was established, which exempted the pass-through counters and last waiting rooms, so that passengers entered the platform area, where at the foot of the plane, implemented an airport safety belt and final fumigation was done by Sanidad Internacional. “
The first group, of 177 people – including the crew of the cruise ship – arrived at the airport in 11 buses and boarded an Icelandair company flight to Keflavik, Iceland.
The remaining 191 passengers flew on Saturday in an Air Belgium plane bound for the city of Dusseldorf, Germany.
