Turismo de Canarias is promoting the creation of seven international air routes that will improve the archipelago's connectivity, especially that of La Palma. Through the new Flight Development Fund (FDV), new routes will be launched with various international airports, which will particularly benefit the Beautiful Island, with four connections, followed by Fuerteventura, with two, and Gran Canaria, with one.
The Minister of Tourism and Employment of the Canary Islands Government, Jéssica de León, assures that "we are meeting the objective we set when launching this call, which is to improve the connectivity of the archipelago and, above all, to attract new routes so that the La Palma tourism sector continues to recover and return to 2019 figures."
In addition, De León emphasized that the Flight Development Fund "does not aim to increase the overall volume of arrivals to the Canary Islands as a whole, but rather **to open new markets,** attract higher-value visitors, and reinforce a more balanced and sustainable tourism model for all islands, from an economic, social, and environmental perspective."
The routes will be operated by leading international airlines and will connect the Canary Islands with key markets in Northern and Central Europe. The new connections, some of which have already begun operating while others will launch this year.
These are La Palma-Basel, operated by easyJet; La Palma-Nantes and Gran Canaria-Marseille, both operated by Volotea; Fuerteventura-Stockholm, operated by TUI; Fuerteventura-Stansted (London) and Fuerteventura-Birmingham, operated by Jet2.com; as well as Copenhagen-Fuerteventura, operated by Scandinavian Airlines.
These routes are part of a broad list that was drawn up by consensus with the interests of each island and that met the requirement of being new to the Canary Islands or not having been operated in the twelve months prior to the call.
The supported routes passed the technical and administrative evaluation provided for in the call published in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands (BOC), for which the operational, economic, and commercial coherence of the proposals was analyzed, and the business plan, total capacity offered, and operational schedule declared by each airline were assessed.
The renewal of the Flight Development Fund, which began in 2014, was authorized in 2022 by the European Commission, which considered it compatible with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which endorses this public aid scheme. With this decision, the strategic importance of air connectivity for the Canary Islands, which favors their economic and social development, was recognized.
