Canarian Airways’ adventure has lasted just over a year. The airline promoted by 14 tourism entrepreneurs from Tenerife and La Palma has suspended all its activity despite the fact that at the end of January, less than six months ago, it announced that from June it would operate a monthly average of between 120 and 124 flights. That announcement was made by the company’s recently appointed CEO, Francisco Rodríguez, whose relationship with Canarian Airways has been short-lived. Rodríguez, founder of the TuBillete.com travel agency and knowledgeable about the springs of the tourism industry, is no longer part of the project, basically because the original project, the creation of a one hundred percent island regular airline in the manner of a small tour operator , has been parked sine die. It has been parked but “it is not dead”, they pointed out yesterday from the company, from where they assure that they maintain their “commitment to destiny” despite this setback. For now, yes, the only plane that makes up the Canarian Airways fleet will remain in the hangar for an indefinite period of time.
The only plane of the company only flew to a couple of cities very intermittently
The short life of the airline has been convulsive. Its promoters were the hotel management association of the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Ashotel, and more specifically its president, Jorge Marichal. Entrepreneurs in the sector always welcomed the creation of an airline to bring tourists who would later stay in their hotels. A kind of tour operator made in the Canary Islands. In February of last year, Marichal himself announced, together with Óscar Trujillo, head of One Airways, the birth of Canarian Airways. The Trujillo company would act as an air operator. The idea was to start selling tickets to travel from Tenerife to four national destinations – Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Vigo – imminently. For this they would use an Airbus A319. However, at the time of the announcement, One Airways did not yet have the necessary air operator certificate (AOC) for an aircraft of this size. It had an AOC to work with smaller aircraft and had requested to expand it to also fly with the Airbus A319, but it still did not have the approval of the State Aviation Safety Agency (AESA). In fact, the sale of tickets was delayed, and that was the first setback in a trajectory marked by announcements that have not materialized.
The company affirms that the project “has not died” and that its “commitment” to the destination remains intact
The inaugural flight of Canarian Airways did not take place until July 2021, a journey in which it could not use its commercial name because it conflicted with the one registered by another firm years before. So Canarian Airways was for a few months Lattitude Hub, a temporary banner that coincided with the name of the public limited company formed by Marichal, Trujillo and the rest of the businessmen involved in the frustrated project. At the end of last year, it managed to recover the original commercial brand, one of the small successes –perhaps the only one– during the company’s short journey. Already in January of this year, the airline suspended flights again after having resumed them in November and announced the reactivation of operations for April. A reactivation that never took place despite the ambition with which the company started 2022. So much so, that it even planned to make the leap to international routes during the second half of the year.
In an interview with the digital newspaper Hosteltur, Francisco Rodríguez, then a newcomer to the airline’s organization chart, anticipated that, “surely”, at the end of this year the company would take steps to have a second plane and, ultimately, have thus of a fleet in the strict sense. The firm also advanced those around 120 monthly routes starting this month and guaranteed the routes with Madrid and Bilbao, the only two destinations with which Tenerife connected very intermittently since that first flight in July 2021.
A future without One Airways
When the launch of Canarian Airways was announced, there were not a few voices that warned about the weakness of the project, among other reasons because the capital disbursed did not seem consistent with such ambitious objectives. The Cabildo de Tenerife was going to allocate 700,000 euros, but the contribution never materialized, so that not a single public euro has been lost in the airline. Although the project suffers a serious injury with its paralysis, its promoters not only do not consider it dead, but also intend to reactivate it sooner or later but more “solid”. The first step for this is to gain autonomy, that is, “not depend on third parties”, which implies achieving its own AOC to disassociate itself from One Airways. In short, that the operator is not “external”, but that the future Canarian Airways has its own air certificate and does not need to go hand in hand with anyone, as has happened so far with Óscar Trujillo’s company. They believe that the experience gained this year will help them “build” a better-founded project.
