Several airlines are making it difficult to access the purchase of airline tickets with Canary Islands resident discounts. This has been communicated by several readers to La Voz and has been confirmed by this editorial team. It should be remembered that Canary Islands residents, as well as those of the Balearic Islands and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, enjoy a 75% bonus when buying airline or boat tickets to guarantee access to mobility connections with the rest of the country.
This situation occurs after the president of the Airline Association (ALA), Javier Gándara, threatened last March to reduce routes or frequencies with the subsidized regions, after denouncing the alleged delays in the payment of compensation for residents. Thus, he assured that they had yet to collect 175 million euros from transport subsidies for the year 2024 and estimated 1.25 billion for 2025.
For example, in the case of the company Vueling, a user of the social network Bluesky has published the step-by-step process to buy a ticket between Lanzarote and Madrid with the resident discount for Easter, between April 12 and 19. Although initially two flights appear, when clicking on the option to subsidize 75% of the journey, both options disappear and the message "there are no flights on this day, but don't worry, you have more dates to choose from" appears. This operation has also been verified by La Voz and the same thing happens between Thursday and Sunday of Easter week.
Likewise, another reader denounced that the airline Air Europa "restricts some of its tickets to Canary Islanders and forces them to pay the fare without discount." In his case, he could not buy a ticket between Lanzarote and Bilbao for the May holiday with the bonus, and without discount it amounted to 623 euros round trip. "I suspect that these are last tickets that they want to pocket directly that huge amount of money without having to wait for the subsidy from the Ministry," he added a few weeks ago in statements to this media.
In the case of Air Europa, the company has denied that there are difficulties in accessing the discount, attributes it to a browser problem and asks users to check if they are on the Spanish website. In addition, it adds that "if the problem persists, contact the airline." However, this editorial team has tried this Monday morning to buy tickets for Easter between Madrid and Bilbao, with the Chrome browser, and the tab "resident in Spain cannot be applied" appears. In this sense, the airline has stressed in statements to La Voz, that it is "a technical and specific incident" and that they will reinforce the error message so that users try with another browser or contact the service center.
Thirdly, another reader reported in mid-March that she had problems making the purchase of three tickets, with minors, on a Ryanair flight, since when making the payment it gave an error when validating the residence of all passengers, so the company finally did not allow her to buy the ticket. When contacting customer service, the airline assured that it was "a problem" that would "take a little time" to resolve and that the system did not recognize the reservations because there were minors without an identity document, a requirement that is not essential.
In addition, this user reported that she had flown only two weeks ago with the same airline without any problems in the purchase. This neighbor was finally able to buy the flights a week later. For its part, Ryanair has not responded to this editorial team about the problems in the purchase of tickets with resident discount.
