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• The Canary Islands is better connected that ever before with regular flights to 156 destinations around the world

Promotur Turismo de Canarias is attending the largest European air connectivity event held in Bilbao next Tuesday 24th. The event gathers around 1,200 aviation professionals, more than 100 air carriers, almost 300 airports and 50 tourism authorities.

Canary Islands Tourism has a full schedule with more than 20 meetings organised, including meetings with the main American airlines such as Delta Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines, as well as other European ones like Germania, SAS, Aer Lingus, Norwegian, Volotea, Jet2, Thomas Cook Airlines, Air Italy, Lufthansa Group, Laudamotion, Air Baltic, British Airways, S7 Airlines, Wizz Air, Small Planet, Easyjet and Vueling. In addition, there are appointments scheduled with those responsible for the airports on main European cities.

This professional forum is highly important as it reminds the main airlines of the strategic interest that the Canary Islands have for their markets, and it helps to positively assess them when planning new routes or maintaining current ones. Basically, those responsible for developing these airlines are being told about our potential so they can look into the profitability of investing if they wish to expand their connectivity.

Regular flights to 156 destinations worldwide

Currently, the Canary Islands has regular flights to 156 destinations worldwide. There are 90 air carriers operating on the Islands, out of which 62 are regular airlines. If we add up all the routes on all the islands, there are 448 regular air routes on the archipelago. And if we sort out the routes by airlines, the number of routes connecting the Canary Islands to the rest of the world, the total adds up to 876.

These figures show that the Canary Islands is nowadays better connected than ever before. But we can do better, hence the meetings being held in the next few days to insist on the routes open for the current call of the Flight Development Fund. The last one was published just a few ago for 3.2 million euros, and if all the routes offered took off, that would result in an increase of 360,000 air seats in two years. If we add the ones that are not open yet from the previous call, like for instance New York-Tenerife, Bucharest-Gran Canaria or Bratislava-Lanzarote, the connectivity of the islands would significantly grow.

New nomination for best European destination attracting air routes

This is a long-term project as airlines often need up to two years to introduce new destinations to their expansion plans. This job has been given the two most important international awards in the air connectivity sphere, the Routes Europe 2017 and the World Routes 2017. This year, at the Routes Europe 2018 forum, the Canary Islands brand is yet again recognised and nominated for best European destination attracting air routes. This time around, it’s competing with Cyprus, Madrid, Malta, Turkey and Finland. This nomination adds up to the 20 awards and recognition achieved by the Canary Islands brand in 2017.