Flights increased between Spain’s Canary Islands in response to growing demand from business travellers in the holiday destination

THE number of flights between Spain’s Canary Islands will be increased from tomorrow Wednesday in response to growing demand from business travellers, the regional government has announced.

The administration’s Public Works, Transport and Property regional ministry and airline Binter have reached an agreement on expanding the number of routes and frequency of services to meet increasingly greater demand from people who need to travel between islands for reasons of work now the entire archipelago is in lockdown de-escalation phase two.

The Canary government said this reflected the fact that after weeks of paralysis and little activity, there is a reactivation of many of the islands’ business sectors.

Daily inter-island services will therefore go up from 32 to 40 flights.

From Gran Canaria there will be five return connections with north Tenerife, four with Lanzarote and three with Fuerteventura. From north Tenerife there will be four return flights a day to La Palma, two to El Hierro, one each to Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.

Binter made it clear to the regional ministry that it has adopted all the European Union Aviation Safety Agency recommendations on health, hygiene and disinfecting aircraft and that it is following all the protocols set out in the various royal decrees and ministerial orders issued since the start of the coronavirus crisis to guarantee passenger safety.

The regional administration said it therefore believed it was the right time to do away with the current 50 per cent capacity limitation on flights.

Recommendations which have been adopted include the obligation to wear face masks and for boarding passes to be printed out before arriving at the airport or carried on a mobile. There are no in-flight food and beverages services, and boarding and disembarking have to be with gaps of between one and 1.5 metres between passengers.

The cleaning of aircraft and terminals has been beefed up and the regional government is continuing to take passengers’ temperatures before boarding.

Despite the request to lift restrictions on flight capacity, for now the inter-island flights under second phase of the easing of lockdown restrictions are operating under the same conditions as set out by law. This means that passengers can only travel for reasons of health or work, or to return to their usual place of residence.