A budget airline known as a Ryanair rival has increased flights to Tenerife after the Irish carrier eliminated one million seats from its schedule.
Vueling, a Spanish airline based in Barcelona, is set to offer nearly 900,000 seats to Tenerife North, the island’s second airport, this winter.
It comes after Ryanair’s recent announcement that it would be cancelling all flights to Tenerife and Vigo, on Spain’s Iberian Peninsula.
The airline has dropped two million seats from its schedule to the UK’s favourite holiday destination over the summer and this coming winter.
It’s all down to a row over a 6.5% hike in airport charges from Spain’s state-owned airport operator, Aena, which Ryanair has refused to pay.
The tit-for-tat spat has developed this week.
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Maurici Lucena, chair and chief executive of Aena, has accused Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary of ‘lying continuously’.
Lucena said the Irish airline is using Aena as a scapegoat to avoid incurring passengers’ wrath for cancelling routes and cutting back flights.
Ryanair was having none of it. A spokesperson said: ‘If we are lying as Lucena claims, then why doesn’t he call our bluff and cut Aena’s high fees at Spain’s empty regional airports?’
‘Ryanair always goes where costs are lower and will happily go back to regional Spain when they stop charging Madrid/Barcelona prices. Until then, it’s adiós Aena.’
Meanwhile, Spain’s Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has assured travellers that the seats will be replaced by other airlines.
Speaking at the Senate earlier this month, he said: ‘Ryanair has left some places, but don’t worry, other companies are coming in to replace them.’
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As for Vueling, the extra 89,000 seats mark an 11 percent jump compared to 2024. The increase will include 25 new weekly routes, including 35 weekly Barcelona to Seville flights, and extra flights to Santiago, Málaga, Alicante, and Valencia.
Connections to Granada, Bilbao, Asturias, and Paris will remain.
UK travellers can easily get to the Canaries with Vueling. The airline flies from London Gatwick and Heathrow, with one-way tickets to Tenerife North averaging around €85 (£73).
Vueling has plans to grow its presence at Santiago de Compostela Airport, in Spain’s northwest Galicia region. The airline is aiming for a 15 percent capacity increase, plus more flights to the Canary Islands.
Metro has contacted Vueling for comment.
Other airlines increasing Canary Island routes
Iberia Express, another Spanish low-cost airline, is adding approximately 30,000 new seats to the Canary Islands for the winter 2025/26 season.
Some 15,000 of these will go to Tenerife North, while 8,300 will fly to La Palma. These routes are included in the airline’s 115 new flights.
This year, Wizz Air also added more than one million seats to and from the Canary Islands, including Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and Fuerteventura.
This increased the Hungarian airline’s capacity by over 28 percent compared to the previous year.
In September, Wizz Air announced it would add almost 40 additional routes from 16 Spanish airports between March 2025 and March 2026.
Finally, Binter, the Canary Islands’ low-cost regional carrier, is also upping its game.
From December 1, the airline will launch five weekly services from Gran Canaria and Tenerife to Seville. A new Tenerife North to Badajoz in southwest Spain will also run twice weekly.
