Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE) regulated maximum tariffs, and whether or not it contributes to rebalancing prices, in the face of user complaints about their higher prices.
It was announced this Monday in Lanzarote by the Minister of Public Works and Transport of the Canary Islands, Sebastián Franquis (PSOE), at the end of the meeting he had with the president of the island’s Cabildo, Dolores Corujo (PSOE), reports the regional Executive it’s a statement.
“It is a pilot experience, the first time that an air OSP is going to be established in the Canary Islands with respect to the peninsula,” Franquis remarked, explaining that it seeks to “establish a maximum price that does not involve excessive intervention in the market for restore the tariff balance without detriment to connectivity”.
Franquis details that it is about “limiting this increase that occurs in air tickets in a special and concrete way in summer and at Christmas, and for those who buy the ticket with little notice, so that there is a balance in the market.”
“Ultimately, it is about companies (airlines) making reasonable profits and that the market is balanced. And the Lanzarote-Madrid route meets all the criteria in the initial study that we have carried out, among others it has an occupancy rate of 85.8% on its flights, because 71% of its occupants are non-residents and because it operates 66 weekly flights” , Add.
The counselor has reported that the route between Lanzarote and Madrid has also been chosen since it has a high number of passengers: between January and November 2022 a total of 524,134 travelers were registered, of which 375,804 were non-residents and 148,330 residents in the Canary Islands, placing it as the third airport in the autonomous community in receiving passengers from the national territory.
In addition, three different airlines operate at the César Manrique-Lanzarote airport for the same route, which makes it possible to analyze the results of this PSO in a competitive market.
“What is intended with this pilot experience of the OSP, which will be applied experimentally during the period to be determined in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport, is to restore the tariff balance that existed prior to July 2018”, indicated the adviser.
Franquis maintains that until then, when the resident subsidy was raised from 50% to 75%, “the market was balanced, the airlines made money with these routes with the Canary Islands and at the same time the prices were balanced in the market” and remember that, from then on, ticket prices from the islands to the rest of Spain rose an average of 28%.
The counselor also alleges that with the experimental air OSP they want to “protect the most important sector of the Canary Islands economy, tourism, so that the Canary Islands continue to be competitive with respect to other markets and not be affected by the price of the tickets, since the objective is to maintain and increase peninsular tourism, which is very important on the islands both for its number and its quality”.
It also seeks to respond to the claims of non-resident canaries living on the peninsula, as stated by the association “Canaries without wings”, so that they can travel to the islands on key dates such as Christmas and summer without being forced to pay prices excessively high, he adds.
“Today we have decided the route and the next step will be to set the maximum price, consult the sector and transfer the proposal of this OSP to the National Commission of the Competition Market and the European Commission itself, with the aim of having all guarantees and at the same time maintain connectivity”, he details. EFE