The New Canary Islands councilors of the Lanzarote Council Óscar Noda and Daysi Villalba have presented this Monday a motion in the Lanzarote Council for the relevant public bodies to "monitor and supervise the work of the airlines" in the face of successive complaints they have received from users of the service who travel to other islands, especially for health reasons.
In their justification they argue that "we have received repeated complaints from citizens of Lanzarote regarding air passenger transport, which is so necessary for our inter-island connectivity, as well as with the peninsula and foreign destinations. It is true that the complaints have been much more numerous regarding the company Binter, an obvious fact because it has the largest market share, more flights, and consequently moves most of the passengers leaving Lanzarote to any destination in our Canary Archipelago. The complaints have different motivations," says Óscar Noda.
The first flights that leave Lanzarote to the capital islands go with a large number of people who go to Gran Canaria or Tenerife for reasons of health care, work or in connection with other destinations. Binter suggests taking the boarding pass online, "but we have seen how oncology patients have been on a waiting list and with the possibility of missing a treatment session for going directly to the check-in counters to get their boarding pass in the established times, after having bought the tickets in advance and at the highest fare to ensure the trip." There are people who remain on the well-known waiting list pending reservation cancellations or that someone does not appear at the time of the flight.
The councilors also emphasize that "delays are something that many passengers are experiencing daily and flight connections are occurring more frequently than usual, which would be understandable due to bad weather or a plane breakdown, but not for any other circumstance, and more so when there is public money for transport bonuses in between."
Óscar Noda insists that "these cases are real and illustrate the despair that citizens may have when they are not allowed to reach their destination, having bought a seat and are not notified of the overbooking, and to top it off, these citizens see a medical treatment in danger and others are exposed to a serious fault in their work or an economic upset since a connection is lost, and with it, even days of vacation. Although passengers know that they can get their boarding pass a week in advance, the existence of a digital divide that means that there are people who cannot access the internet because they lack the resource or because they do not know how to use it cannot be ignored."
Óscar Noda adds that "we must remember that they are private companies and that the amount of public money they receive in subsidies is considerable, but they receive it to provide an adequate and excellent quality service, so we must know deeply if this money really reverts to those parameters and public funds are managed properly."
Therefore, Villalba and Noda, arguing in the explanatory memorandum of the motion some of the existing problems, ask the Cabildo of Lanzarote to approve the following proposed agreement:
- That through its Data Center, the Cabildo of Lanzarote conduct a survey on inter-island air transport companies regarding the current degree of satisfaction of the resident population in Lanzarote in relation to the services provided and the main problems that users encounter when traveling.
- That the Cabildo of Lanzarote urges the Government of the Canary Islands to launch a regional study of the quality of air transport that is being offered in the Canary Islands and the main problems that our citizens encounter when traveling through the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (ISTAC).
- That the Cabildo of Lanzarote urges the Government of the Canary Islands to conduct a needs study and analysis to assess that a part of the seats on the first flights from non-capital islands to the capital islands be declared seats of general interest for health reasons and that these are not subject to airline availability.
