Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE) Currently, its average price for flights to the islands is 25% lower than in 2013.
It is a message that the chief executive of the Spanish airline, Javier Sánchez-Prieto, has transferred to the media after meeting with the president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, with issues on the table such as the impact that the absorption of Air Europa by Iberia’s parent group, IAG, and the rise in ticket prices.
This last aspect is not only the reason for constant complaints by passengers, but it has also been examined by AIReF and the Ministry of Transport itself and a figure has already been put on it that the Government of the Canary Islands has used as a reference to ensure that a route subject to maximum fares is put to the test: ticket prices to the islands have increased by 28% since 2018, when the public subsidy to the resident traveler was raised from 50% to 75%.
The executive president of Iberia has replied this Friday respectfully that with his company flights are currently 25% cheaper between the peninsula and the Canary Islands than a decade ago, if the “average price” paid by its customers is taken as a reference and which has amounted to 110 euros before applying the resident discount.
And it also maintains that one in five passengers of the airline on the routes to the Canary Islands (18%) flies for the minimum price, 40 euros before the resident discount, a rate that would be 50% cheaper than a decade ago, Always according to your accounts.
Sánchez-Prieto has also defended the service that Iberia provides in the Canary Islands, a community to which it provides connectivity that ensures that only the Madrid-Barcelona air bridge improves in Spain, with almost 1,000 people employed in the operations of the islands.
Regarding the concern expressed on several occasions by the Government of the Canary Islands that the absorption of Air Europa by IAG reduces competition on the routes to the islands and that translates into fewer flights with the rest of Spain and at a more expensive price, the president of Iberia He has assured that the effects of the operation for the Canary Islands will be “quite the opposite”: it will serve to reinforce connections.
“What this acquisition should come from is to reinforce that connectivity (Canary Islands-peninsula) and it would never be detrimental to the current situation. Since 2013, the Iberia group has doubled the number of seats that connect with the Canarian community and that will continue to be the case”, he argued.
Sánchez-Prieto has detailed that the Iberia group plans to expand the seats on the Canary Islands routes by 20% in the next three years, until 2025, and with “competitive prices”.
Asked about the decision to test a route subject to public service obligations (OSP) in the Canary Islands, specifically a Madrid-Lanzarote connection, the president of Iberia replied that the OSPs were created at the time for another purpose: to generate supply in markets where “naturally it did not exist”.
In this case, the OSP is applied on a trial basis with the stated purpose of testing the effect of capping the rates to the Canary Islands.
“It is complex to analyze what effect the establishment of maximum rates can have on the availability of places. There are some challenges that we are all going to face”, said the executive president of Iberia in this regard. EFE
