The disastrous day experienced last Sunday in Guacimeta, where the images of bewilderment and chaos so common a few months ago during the strike carried out by Iberia's handling workers were reproduced, with the aggravating factor that on this occasion they were not motivated by any type of demand, could have fatal consequences for the Island, as some tour operators are considering diverting their flights to other airports to avoid such embarrassing situations as those experienced on Sunday.
This is an old problem, although it may have been aggravated by the employment regulation recently carried out by Iberia at Lanzarote airport, but what is clear is that it requires urgent decision-making because otherwise tourism, the main engine of the island's economy, will end up suffering.
And it is that the tour operators, it seems, are not going to stand idly by while a solution falls from the sky, and they may have already begun to consider the possibility of diverting their flights to other islands to prevent situations like those experienced on Sunday in Guacimeta from recurring in the future.
Divert flights
In this regard, the spokesman for the Iberia Strike Committee, León Fajardo, raised yesterday during his intervention in the program "Buenos Días Lanzarote", of Radio Lanzarote, the possibility that the Swiss tour operator Hotel Plan has begun to divert its flights to the neighboring island of Fuerteventura, which, if confirmed, would be an extremely serious event. In this regard, he expressed his fear that the measure will be followed by the rest of the tour operators, with the damage that would be done to the Island.
Despite this, Juan Ferrer, representative of the tour operators on the Island, denied yesterday to this newspaper such extremes, and assured that for the moment this measure is not contemplated by any of the tour operators that are currently operating on the Island. In this sense, he guaranteed that they have no intention of doing so in the near future either, although they are concerned about the airport's inability to provide an efficient service to all passengers and flights operating with Lanzarote on Thursdays and Sundays.
Relieve the airport
For many, the solution would be to alleviate the number of operations that are registered at the airport on Thursdays and Sundays, looking for formulas that would allow to move these flights to other days of the week. This is, a priori, a difficult measure to implement, although as assured by the president of the Association of Travel Agencies of the Island, José Torres, "not impossible" if there is a will and tour operators are offered some kind of incentives to vary their days of arrival and departure to the Island.
The current agglomeration of flights on Thursdays and Sundays, in the words of Torres, is causing the service provided to visitors to be deficient, so the tourist takes a negative image of the Island.
In this sense, if the current system persists, the situation will end up exploding somewhere since "there is no territory that can withstand it", said José Torres, while recalling that it is "an old problem", but that today remains unsolved. "This issue has been entrenched for 8 or 9 years and it is time for all of us to sit down to negotiate and look for solutions, because surely there are some", said the president of the Travel Agencies of the Island.
Finally, José Torres wanted to insist on the contrast between the emptiness and the desert aspect that the airport facilities present for five days a week, with the physiognomy that it acquires on Thursdays and Sundays, where there is hardly room for a pin. In this regard, he pointed out that the displacement of some flights to the days of less activity would benefit the Island, job stability and the visitors themselves.